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 rainforests of British Columbia.
Hamilton Adventures
For the past Edmond Hamilton adventures, “The Fire Princess”, “The Lake of Life”, and “The Six Sleepers”, the pattern was set by A. Merritt, with his lost worlds where terrible evil holds thrall over the inhabitants. In “The World With a Thousand Moons”, Ed was working in a Stanley G. Weinbaum mode. Today the influence changes again, this time either Nictzin Dyalhis’s “The Sapphire Goddess” or possibly Homer Eon Flint’s The Blind Spot. (For more on Portal world tales, go here.) For this is a tale of a man raised on Earth but destined to rule on another world entirely. (See Gardner F. Fox’s The Druid Stone for an even newer version of this kind of tale.)
“The World of the Dark Dwellers” appeared in Weird Tales, August 1937. And if you ever wonder why Ed sold so many stories to Weird Tales and Farnsworth Wright, remember that WT never rejected any Hamilton story they ever received. It was a guaranteed market even if it didn’t pay well or quickly. Hamilton could experiment on plots and themes without fear of editorial intervention. Nictzin Dyalhis’s “The Sapphire Goddess” (February 1934) also appeared in Weird Tales to much acclaim, so Wright knew his readers wouldn’t have any problem going back for more.
Across the Dimensions
The plot has Eric North living on Earth and receiving a special scroll at his father’s death. His father, James North, had insured that young Eric became a master at sword-fighting and learned a strange non-Earth language. On his father’s death, he learned why. The scroll tells him he is descended from Nort Norus, ruler of the world of Krann. When evil forces within the palace, using the power of the “Dwellers in Darkness”, lead a coup, Nort Norus and his kin had fled through the dimensions to Earth. Now that Eric is a grown man and a physicist of great learning, he can return to Krann and take his rightful place.
Using his learned scientific knowledge, North creates a machine that can cross the dimensions. He finds himself in Krann, a world with a red sun. He is in a forest and tries to hide the machine under a tree. The tree has other ideas:
The black branches of the tree reached down like great tentacles and grasped me! They started to draw me into the glossy trunk. I uttered a hoarse cry and jerked back. Just in time I tore loose from those branch-tentacles before others seized me. The limbs of the octupus-tree whipped wildly and baffledly after me, seeking again to clutch me.
The octopus tree is a pretty typical SF killer plant. North escapes the fiend by using his sword. He hears a woman scream and goes to help. A beauty is being attacked by another octopus tree. He cuts her loose only to have her attack him. Several men show up and they want to kill the intruder. (North can understand them since his father taught him Krannian. The language has changed but he can understand them.) The men prove to be members of The Brotherhood that Eric learned about from Nort Norus’s letter. They exist to see the Redeemer return and overthrow the usurpers and the Dark Dwellers. Eric proves his kingship with a necklace made up of three intersecting pentagons. He now has an army! He also has the beautiful woman, named Lura, eying him too.
Flying Dinosaurs!
The Brotherhood are attacked by guards from Zinziba, the capitol city of Krann. These soldiers arrive on the backs of flying dinosaurs called “rhors”. (This is the image that Virgil Finlay chooses for the illustration.) This force captures the rebels and flies them to the city where the despot Gor Am awaits them. Eric makes no secret of his identity, claiming his throne and calling himself the Redeemer. North tries to sway the lords who support Gor Am but fails. He and Lura are scheduled to be sent as sacrifices to the Dark Dwellers. Every year the Khal (king) must send a rail-like car full of victims below as payment for their services.
The Dark Dwellers
But the rumors of the return of the Redeemer spread throughout Zinziba and Gor Am flees with Eric and Lura to the undercity where the Dark Dwellers live. His plan is to ask for new powers to overthrow the revolt. We get our first glimpse of a dark Dweller:
The Dwellers in Darkness were —worm-creatures. Like huge white worms they were, ten feet in length and two in diameter, wriggling smoothly forward from all around us in the forest of mighty mechanisms.
But—and this was most horrible about them—they were also at the same time man-like. Not their hideous vermiform bodies, no, but their faces. For faces they had in the front of their upreared blunt heads, with two superhumanly huge, glowing eyes, slit-like mouths, and tiny ear-apertures. From below the blunt head projected what looked like tiny, rudimentary arms.
These terrible creatures have lived underground so long that any beam of sunlight will kill them. They use the brains of the sacrificial victims for their weird and arcane experiments. This is also the only real Horror element in a Horror magazine. Hamilton layers on the ick factor with the worm bodies and the brain experiments to keep Farnsworth Wright happy. (In 1937, Wright still purchased Sword & Sorcery stories for WT and wouldn’t reject heroic fantasy for a few years yet.)
I Have a Clever Plan!
The worms agree to give Gor Am a new disintegrator blast weapon to quell the revolt. Eric North and Lura will have their brains removed. But North acts quickly and offers to build the worms a machine to allow them to cross the dimensions and ravage Earth. Lura is horrified by the idea. The Dark Dwellers agree, but after the machine is made the pair will be dissected.
North works quickly to construct another machine from the multitude of equipment the worms possess, for they are scientific if evil race. He creates a new machine for them but before the worms can figure out his intentions, he use the device to send the roof of the cavern out into space. This exposes the worms to the sun, killing them all. He and Gor Am have a dual. The fat usurper loses and Eric becomes Khal of Krann as he was destined to be. He also get Lura for his queen.
Nictzin or Not?
So was Hamilton channeling Nictzin Dyalhis? Perhaps a little. The Portal fantasy elements are similar, though Eric North has to invent a dimensional traveling machine while King Karan, the hero in “The Sapphire Goddess” just has Zarf show up through a dimensional door and whisk him off. Dyalhis’s hero was from the alternate dimension but has lost his memory. Eric North is a descendant with a handy scroll and a family legacy.
Another possible source is H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1894) at least for the machine elements. One letter writer in “The Eyrie” gave the story its only comment: “Clifton Hall of Los Angeles writes: ….I thought World of the Dark Dwellers was pretty good, although the idea of mechanical masters who had once been men living underground and preying on the ‘light dwellers’ is strangely like H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine….” It is not unlikely that Hall is correct, for Wells influenced much of Hamilton’s early invasion fiction. The fact that no other letters mention “World of the Dark Dwellers” is telling. Oddly, Wright scheduled J. Paul Suter’s “The Abyss Under the Earth” for the same issue. Maybe a little too much subterranean similarity?
Another hint that Nictizin Dyalhis may have been the inspiration is that both stories are told in the first person. This, along with the names like Nort Norus, feel more like a John Carter adventure by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but Dyalhis uses it, too. Some of the names made me giggle a little like the brawny sidekick Herk Ell. Steve Urkel was still fifty-two years away.
A strange side note: the name Eric North is known to fans of Argosy. The British author, whose real name was Bernard Charles Cronin, sold his first tale as North in 1938. I wonder if he had read Hamilton’s tale and chose his pseudonym from that? It could be a coincidence. Andre Norton would start her career as Andrew North. The North name has a certain beefiness to it for a pen name.
Conclusion
“World of Dark Dwellers” feels oddly like an early ancestor to the film, Krull (1983). Except for the Portal fantasy element, it is a similar kind of tale where you don’t really feel the good guys will lose. Like Krull, this cross-dimensional tale feels a little like Sword & Sorcery but isn’t because of the Science Fictional elements. I often hear Krull labeled a “Sword & Sorcery” film but it is closer to Sword & Planet. Perhaps this is hair-splitting to some but to me they are different things. The space adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter series are more the parent of “Dark Dwellers”and Krull. We get swords, and weird science that is almost sorcery, monsters but somehow it isn’t quite Conan the Barbarian. It was an unusual switch for Hamilton, but the lack of reader response guaranteed he wasn’t about to repeat the experiment again. There is no sequel to “World of the Dark Dwellers”, nor does there need to be. (That being said, it looks like Krull may get a reboot!)
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