The Stars, My Brothers

Edmond Moore Hamilton (1904 - 1977) was a popular author of science fiction stories and novels during the mid-twentieth century. He began college at age 14. He was the author of the first hardcover compilation of what would come to be known as the science fiction genre. During the late 1920s and early '30s Hamilton wrote for all of the science fiction pulp magazines. This story begins, "Something tiny went wrong, but no one ever knew whether it was in an electric relay or in the brain of the pilot. The pilot was Lieutenant Charles Wandek, UNRC, home address: 1677 Anstey Avenue, Detroit. He did not survive the crash of his ferry into Wheel Five. Neither did his three passengers, a young French astrophysicist, an East Indian expert on magnetic fields, and aforty-year-old man from Philadelphia who was coming out to replace a pump technician. Someone else who did not survive was Reed Kieran, the only man in Wheel Five itself to lose his life. Kieran, who was thirty-six years old, was an accredited scientist-employee of UNRC."