“Alien Earth” by Edmond Hamilton first appeared in the April 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. It has seldom been reprinted. I just discovered it in an old copy of The Great SF Stories 11 (1949) which came out in 1984. In other words, this story is mostly forgotten. You can read it online at the Internet Archive.

Edmond Hamilton got his start in Weird Tales in the 1920s but eventually wrote extensively for many kinds of pulps and comics. Today he is mainly remembered, if he’s remembered at all, for his space opera, especially as the primary author of Captain Future. Because of this, when I turned the page of this anthology and saw it was by Edmond Hamilton I groaned inwardly. I wasn’t in the mood for a silly space opera. Instead, I got a contemporary adventure tale that grabbed me and I grabbed back.

I don’t know why “Alien Earth” is not better remembered because I found it very readable and compelling. Within a few paragraphs, I was thinking what a great writer Hamilton was, and impressed he could do something so different. The opening line was just right, “The dead man was standing in a little moonlit clearing in the jungle when Farris found him.” The dead man, described as a typical Laos tribesman, wasn’t entirely dead. I don’t know my 1949 geography, but I’m guessing this is French Indochina. So the story starts out as a jungle adventure in a science fiction magazine. It was both realistic and fantastic, and ultimately, wonderfully speculative.

I can’t describe much of the story without creating spoilers, but let’s say it reminds me of the stories of Carlos Castenada I read back in my New Age phase in the late 1970s. It deals with states of consciousness and could easily have been popular during the New Wave period of science fiction back in the 1960s, something J. G. Ballard could have written.

I have an ongoing fantasy about editing an anthology of forgotten science fiction stories. “Alien Earth” is a story I’d want to include. Read it, and let me know what you think. I fear I might love stories that few others would love too since so often the stories I’d want for my imaginary anthology are not ones many remember. Maybe I should call my anthology Forgotten Science Fiction for Readers Like Me. It might sell 17 copies.

James Wallace Harris