Steele, Allen. Avengers of the Moon. Tor, 2017.
Allen Steele is a science fiction writer who says he grew up reading the pulp magazines and novels in the field from the forties and fifties. One of his pulp space opera heroes was Captain Future, a young scientist adventurer, whose stories began in the early 1940s. Most of them were written by Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977), who along with E. E. “Doc” Smith, was one of the founders of space opera adventure fantasy in American pulps. Hamilton was already twenty-years into his career when golden-age writers like Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke became stars. In Avengers of the Moon, Steele says his purpose was to update and reboot the stories, placing the events a bit farther in the future than 2015, maturing the characters a bit, fixing some of the gender stereotypes, and updating the science and technology. But, he says, he wanted to keep the spirit of the early pulps intact. The pulpiness is there, perhaps a bit too much. Despite the polish he has given them, the stories seem rusty. I like the robots, cyborgs, androids, and cute ET pets, but the plots and characters are hard to swallow. Can we still buy mad scientists in secret bases on Mars? Or the president of an interplanetary government entrusting secret missions to a young man code-named Captain future--even if the kid is embarrassed by the moniker? Reboots can work. John Scalzi’s Little Fuzzy was wonderful, but some old stories are harder to reboot than others. When John Scalzi rebooted H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy series from the 1960s, he had an easier task—there was less space fantasy and more plausible planetary adventure than Steele had to work with. As for Captain Future, I admire the effort, but it is not for me. 3.5. stars. ( )

I have no idea what this is about. I saw the cover and I wanted to read it.

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC!

Ed Hamilton's old Captain Future stories of the 40's are Golden Age SF staples.... or pulp fiction... that many people have loved and promptly forgotten through the ages, but not completely forgotten.

In case you're wondering what the Golden Age SF is, it's the zap guns, the cyborgs, the Robbie robots, the classic rocket-ships, the dastardly villains and the exotic locations -- It's that kind of thing. :) Goofy names, heavily telegraphed plots, and especially -- the pathos!

The thing is, Allen Steele writes a real homage to Ed Hamilton's character, including better reasons, updated technology to fit today's SF standards, and even a much better character lineup. You know -- characters that avoid stupid robots, complex brains in jars rather than just crazy ones, women who aren't cardboard with boobs, and interactions across the board that doesn't just make me laugh my way through the book as if I was reading a caricature of really silly (and bad) SF.

This isn't bad. It feels like an updated boy's adventure tale with regular men with better tech doing heroic things and using silly names for somewhat silly reasons.

It's nice for what it is and what it wants to accomplish.

But do I really call it High-SF? No. I do appreciate it for being what it is. It'd be good as a YA SF. It's clear and it's direct. It's bigger than life. Better yet, it's DIFFERENT from anything else that's been written for 70 years. It's good enough to bring people back into a feel of a different time and outlook while not regressing into cultural awkwardness, to give us all that taste of an optimistic and idealistic world where good guys win and bad guys get justice, not just death.

For these reasons, I totally recommend it for anyone. :)

But if you have nagging questions like why Curt let so many people die while saving the one man he wanted to kill and how that fits into his growing moral code.... then perhaps you might want to let this slide a little. :) *ahem*

( )

I really enjoyed this re introduction of Captain Future. I am not familiar with the original Captain Future, but it seems to have been written very well and give off a feeling of nostalgia for the golden age of science fiction. ( )

What a delightful romp through a memory that never was! Retro pulp? Campy heroes? Great fun!

NetGalley asks what attracts its readers to its books, whether title, author, buzz, or ... cover - which never grabs me. Except, this cover did. And I'm glad. Id never heard of Hamilton or Captain Future, but from the pulp I read when young I can imagine. Steele did a good job updating yet homaging his own memories.

The sci-fi geek loves this and can forgive nearly everything's not the spirit , but the beer geek in me couldn't help but choke a tad reading

“Otho moved closer to Curt. “Order a beer,” he murmured. “You don’t have to drink it, but it’ll look strange if you don’t get anything.”
“A session ale is the best if you don’t drink much,” Joan quietly added. “I recommend a Lost Planet Lager."

Two wrongs together! "Session ale", and then...suggesting a...lager??!! Oh well...it's still a good read. ( )