This post is brought to you by Strange Adventures by G. W. Thomas. Enjoy a fast-paced adventure filled with action and horror? Then this is the book for you with four Weird Westerns featuring Deputy Sheriff Brett Hope. “Heller” has Hope running from an ancient terror but falling amongst bad men. “Laacoon” has Hope doing the pursuing of some dark secret that is slowly killing an entire family. “Silence” features a town full of vampires, where the undead make no noise. And “Weep the Dust” sees the deputy find a job as sheriff, at last, only to have Bargainville invaded by strange zombie-like dead men. The rest of the book will take you to far places like the Alps, Labrador and the interior desert and rain forests of British Columbia. Check out the companion volume Strange Detectives too.
Previously I talked about Edmond Hamilton’s stories in the style of A. Merritt. This included “The World of the Dark Dwellers” (1937), “The Lake of Life” (1937) and “The Fire Princess” (1938), “The Valley of the Assassins” (1943) in particular. All these stories have brave, wide-chinned heroes venturing into mysterious mountains where strange dwellers exist in James Hilton-style Shangri-las. Though Hilton gets some credit, it is more Abraham Merritt who inspired these stories with The Face in the Abyss (1931) and Dwellers in the Mirage (1932) amongst other tales. While Merritt sold these novels to Argosy, Hamilton’s mountains usually appeared in Weird Tales.
This post adds another tale to this list with “The King of Shadows” from Weird Tales, January 1947. But some interesting things have happened in the nine-ten years since the earlier epics. Hamilton writes the Merritt style strange adventure but does it more economically and with an emphasis on character more typical of his wife, Leigh Brackett. (There was a time when I would have said Brackett had no part in the writing of any Hamilton story but the evidence these days suggests they had more than previously thought. That being said, I don’t know if Leigh did more than inspire Ed to write it this way.)
The plot has John Fallon in the Kunlun Range with four Kirghiz guides. The men refuse to take their employer into a sacred valley because it is haunted. Those who go there don’t come back. John seeks to find his lost friend, Rick Carnaby, whose plane landed in that strange valley. The guides tell John of the King of Shadows, Dark Erlik, a figure worthy of Satan. Strange lights come from the valley. The Kirghiz play their shaman drums to drive off the evil but Fallon has wandered off from the sound. He sees a beautiful woman made of shadow. She touches his arm, then leads him off towards the valley.
Fallon wakes in the forbidden city of Santahar. The shadow woman is back. She is Valain, one of a host of the First Race who form the shadow army of Erlik. She has come to take Fallon to her master. Before he can go another shadow appears. It is Carnaby. He begs his friend to flee. When Erlik himself shows up, Fallon fills his shadowy body with bullets. They do nothing. Erlik sends the prisoner into another world.
The master of Santahar takes Fallon on a ghost journey to explain about the history of the First Race, humanity. Humans came to Earth from another planet, fleeing terrible alien invaders. The shadow army of Erlik is all that keeps the monsters from Earth, while humanity dwells in ignorance. Erlik and his followers use a light bridge to go into space to fight back the invaders. Valain and Rick Carnaby are holy defenders of the planet. Fallon learns from Rick that when his plane crashed his body was broken unto death. Only Erlik’s magic saved him as a shadow person. Fallon will join them as he can’t return to the outer world unless he talks.
The prisoner also realizes that he is in love with Valain. She feels the same. Erlik has the power to turn her back into a natural woman. She helps him to escape but before the pair can get far Erlik shows up to take her back. He is willing to let Fallon go because the First Race allies in the Sirius system have thrown off the aliens and final victory is at hand. Valain promises Fallon she will return after the great battle. The story ends with Fallon camped out in Santahar, waiting for his true love.
The majority of this tale is the same as most Merritt adventures: with a brave hero 9though alone– there is usually a bunch of companions), a special and beautiful woman, a lost race, a lost world and a great evil. Where things differ is that Erlik is not evil but a determined champion against evil. The magical turns out to be more Science Fictional (not unknown in Merritt). The man waiting for his love is not th usual. (I have criticized previous tales in which the woman involved goes from being the queen of her people to being a housewife. Here we are left to imagine what Fallon and Valain will be like IF she returns.)
Hamilton’s use of Erlik, the Turkic god of the underworld, reminded me of Robert E. Howard’s El Borak tale “The Daughter of Erlik Khan” (Top-Notch, December 1934). Howard, too, used the mythological figure as a guise for a powerful man set in the region of the Far East. I’m not suggesting Hamilton had read Howard’s tale, though he might have, but shared a common mythic reference. The romantic plot of a man falling for a womanly spirit is pure Merritt. Hamilton would use it again in The Valley of Creation (Startling Stories, July 1948), a book that Leigh Brackett assisted with, writing three of the chapters according to their interview in Tangent No. 5 (Summer 1976).
Conclusion
That “The King of Shadows” warrants more kudos than previous Merrit-esque adventures is hinted at in where it appeared after 1947. The story was included in What’s it Like Out There? and Other Stories (1974). This collection is considered Hamilton’s best and most mature work by some. It features most of his work written after 1945. It also includes “Serpent Princess”, another Merrit-style piece. The Best of Edmond Hamilton did not include any of these strange adventure tales, but most were too long. But not “The King of the Shadows”. It might have served as his best example in this style. It was included in DMR’s Twilight of the Gods (2020), a collection packed with Merritt magic.
Appreciating the work of Edmond Hamilton takes a little history. His early work is largely dismissed even though he was a pioneer. he and Jack Williamson attempted the almost impossible task of earning a living as a Science Fiction-fantasy writer in the 1920-30s. This included writing Merritt-style adventure fiction to keep the fires burning. Where most turned to writing Westerns or Detective stories, these two strived to stay in the Fantastic field as long as possible. (Ed would later write some “thrilling adventure” and detective tales. For Williamson, it was turning to academic work.) Whatever their reason for pastiching the great master, we ca enjoy their many strange adventures.
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