Aspiring audiobook narrator James Kocher has taken up our challenge! He’s planning to record Edmond Hamilton’s City At World’s End.
Born in 1904 Hamilton was a contemporary of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, and like them sold many stories to Weird Tales magazine. He is also credited with co-creating, with E.E. “Doc” Smith, the Space Opera sub-genre of Science Fiction. In 1946 he married fellow SF author Leigh Brackett. Hamilton not only wrote novels, he also wrote comics too! One of his more memorable being Action Comics #300 (starring Superman). Readers have even remarked on the similarities between that issue and Hamilton’s City At World’s End.
Now to City At World’s End: Just imagine what might happen to a city that is thrown far into a far future…
The pleasant little American city of Middletown is the first target in an atomic war – but instead of blowing Middletown to smithereens, the super-hydrogen bomb blows it right off the map – to somewhere else! First there is the new thin coldness of the air, the blazing corona and dullness of the sun, the visibility of the stars in high daylight. Then comes the inhabitant’s terrifying discovery that Middletown is a twentieth-century oasis of paved streets and houses in a desolate brown world without trees, without water, apparently without life, in the unimaginably far-distant future.
Below is the “inspirational art” for James’ audiobook…
