Captain Future: the sf pulp hero

I usually like to read some of the original pulp stories before doing a posting on a character, but due to recent events going on with this character, I felt an overview article was in order.

Captain Future, published by Thrilling (aka Ned Pine‘s Better), was probably its third most-popular pulp hero and possibly the only explicitly sf pulp hero. Editor Mort Weisinger developed the idea for the character, but main author Edmond Hamilton took that idea and turned it into Captain Future.

Most likely people today would remember him from the poster in the TV series The Big Bang Theory, which is a blowup of one of the pulp covers.

Launched in his own title from 1940 to 1944, after which he moved to Startling Stories for a couple more years. Captain Future later came back in 1950-51 for seven more novelettes. Except for a few, all where written by Hamilton.

The character in many ways seems inspired by Doc Savage. Curt Newton is Captain Future, who operates as a roving independent troubleshooter for the President of the Solar System. Curt’s parents had taken him as an infant, along with their scientist friend Simon Wright, to a secret base on the moon.

They did so to avoid a criminal politician named Victor Corvo. Simon is dying, and they transfer his brain into an artificial case. They also create an intelligent robot named Grag and a shape-changing android named Otho. But they are tracked down by Corvo, who brings killers with him. They kill Curt’s parents, but are killed by Grag and Otho.

The three raise Curt into a mental and physical marvel, who takes on the code-name of “Captain Future” to use his skills and scientific knowledge to fight evil. Simon, now called “The Living Brain,” along with Grag and Otho, are called “The Futuremen” and assist Curt. Grag and Otho provide the Ham and Monk dynamic (from Doc Savage), even having their own alien pets. There is also Joan Randall, a Planet Patrol agent, as a possible love interest. A re-occuring villain is Ul Quorn, the “Magician of Mars,” who is half Martian and the son of Victor Corvo.

As I understand, at first the stories are set in the Solar System, which is inhabited by several humanoid races: Venusians, Martians, etc. Later stories the team’s spacecraft has a new drive that can take them to other star systems, dimensions, and even the past.

Comics

As I’ve noted in previous postings, Thrilling Publications’s parent company also had a comicbook company, known as Nedor Comics. Nedor published another Captain Future who had no connection to Curt. So they adapted the first Captain Future story to comics, but renamed him “Major Mars.” For some reason, there were no other stories with this character.

Reprints

In the 1960s during the pulp hero reprint crazy, Pine’s Popular Library reprinted several Captain Future novels, with Frank Frazetta and Jeff Jones covers, as well as using some covers from the German Perry Rhodan series.

More recently, Haffner Press has been reprinting the series in hardback omnibus volumes, with four novels each. Three have been published, with a 4th already in pre-order. One more should be needed for the rest of the novels, then hopefully the final 7 novelettes in one volume. Pulpville Press has reprinted the seven novelettes in one volume. And Steeger Books (formerly Altus Press) has put all the stories out in ebook format.

New Stories

In 2017, Allen Steele published a new Captain Future novel: Avengers of the Moon. Done with the approval of the Edmond Hamilton estate, it’s a modern retelling of Captain Future’s “origin” story. In this version, the human race has colonized the solar system, but have created genetically engineered races for the other planets: Venusians, Martians, etc. Otho, created by Curt’s parents and Simon Wright, was originally to be a new artificial body to house Simon’s brain. Victor Corvo wanted it to create a new race of immortal soldiers. Instead, Otho develops as a new sentient life form. Grag was a work robot that by a quirk of fate develops sentience. But otherwise it follows the original plot.

I was bothered by the idea of a modern update/retelling, because too often such lose sight of what made the original great. Or brings in too many modern ideas that don’t work. But I have to say that this one does work well. I haven’t read the original one yet, and hope to do a review to compare and contrast them.

And the new book was planned as the first of a trilogy, but despite its success, this didn’t happen.

But the publishers behind the new Amazing Stories have now stepped in and started a new book series, “Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future.” The first book is out with “Captain Future in Love” (a novella by Steele originally serialized in a recent pair of Amazing Stories issues). Hopefully this will be successful and we’ll get more, because the plan is it will be the first of four novellas that will make up the planned second part of the trilogy. The first issue also gives a good overview of the original Captain Future and how this new series came about.

As I get the Haffner volumes and the new stories, I plan further postings on the stories themselves. Please check them out on your own, especially the new series to ensure its success.