Captain Future

Normally, I like a good old pulp adventure, and Edmond Hamilton wrote some good ones.  I do have to admit, though, that these names aren't very inventive.  I think I probably used some of them in my early D&D maps when I was 12-13 or so.  (I used to doodle during class, probably to distract myself from boredom.  For a while, Christopher Tolkien pastiche maps of Middle-earth pastiche fantasy settings was my favorite doodling subject.  I still love drawing maps, although I don't do it nearly enough.)

Anyway, from Hamilton's Captain Future stories (a character he didn't create, but he did do most of the writing for.)

Mountains of Darkness... on the dark side of Mercury.  As it turns out, Mercury isn't tidally locked anyway, so there is no light side, dark side and twilight zone.  But that's a common trope in a lot of earlier science fiction.

The undersea city of... Sea-Fuk!  lolwut?  I know Neptune is pretty bluish, and of course, it's named for the Roman god of the sea, but did people really think that it was a big ole water planet?

Northtown, Southtown and Jungletown!  Well, those are... creative... names!

And here's Mars.  Not nearly as clever as ERB's or even Leigh Brackett's, but serviceable enough, I suppose, from a mid-century pulp perspective.  There's a lot of forgotten versions of Mars out there from Planet Stories and other pulp mags that are very similar.

Anyway, when I first saw these maps, I was kind of excited about them.  There are some great maps of Skaith, for instance, or Barsoom.  Heck, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a freakin' genius when it came to inventing names; he has some really great names, especially on Mars.

But it looks like that wasn't one of Hamilton's skills.  Oh, well.  He did write some great stories nonetheless.  Here's one of first ones of his that I read; I didn't even realize that it was his until years afterwards, because I didn't pay enough attention to who wrote what.  But I read this from my public library when I was 11-12 or so.  With that cover, too!