Star kings

John Gordon, an insurance company clerk, a recent bomber pilot during World War II, heard a mental call from the distant future at night. The prince and scientist of the Middle Galactic Empire, Zarth Arn, turning directly to the mind of Gordon, invited him to exchange consciousness in order to explore his era. Zart Arn explained that a real time travel is impossible, but thought is immaterial, and thus, it is possible to move into the human body from another era. Gordon agreed and ended up in the body of the prince after 200 thousand years in the future.

However, unforeseen complications arose. Zarth Arn, in whose body was the mind of John Gordon, found himself at the center of an interstellar conspiracy and was almost captured by the soldiers of the Cloud, a militaristic space power subordinate to dictator Shorr Kahn. He ended up in the capital of the Mid-Galactic Empire - the Throne in the Canopus system - and was forced to play the role of a prince in front of Emperor Arn Abbas and the courtiers on the eve of a dynastic marriage between him and Princess Fomalhauta Lianna. Sincere feelings arose between John Gordon and the princess, but political intrigues led the prince to be first accused of treason, and after a successful assassination attempt on the emperor - and patricide. He and Lianna were abducted and taken to the Cloud, in the residence of Shorra Kahn in Tallarn, under the command of a traitor captain.

Shorr Kahn, a cynic and a demagogue, in an attempt to read the prince’s memories with the help of a special “mind-block” apparatus, quickly found out that he wasn’t what he claimed to be and did not know the main secret of the Empire - about a superweapon called the Destroyer. This unknown Destroyer, used only once several thousand years ago, is the only thing that prevents the Cloud from attacking the Empire. The whole insidious plan of the dictator has lost its meaning due to the exchange of consciousnesses. Having deceived the dictator and feignedly agreeing to the role of the puppet ruler of the Empire under the real power of Shorr Kahn, Gordon seeks permission to temporarily return to Earth, and along the way forces the cloudbreakers to engage in battle with the patrol of the Empire.

The crashed cloud ship sits on an abandoned planet, where Gordon and Lianna almost die at the hands of its mutant inhabitants, but the situation is saved by the Imperials, to whom Gordon managed to send a signal. However, there Gordon fell into the hands of traitor Admiral Chen Corbulo and was nearly executed. Having provoked the crew of the imperial ship into rebellion, which ended in the murder of the traitor, Gordon insists on his innocence and demands to be delivered to Canopus. There, before the brother-emperor Jal Arn, he proves the falsity of the accusations, reveals the conspiracy, but the emperor was seriously injured by the second dignitary Ort Bodmer, a participant in the Corbulo conspiracy.

Shorr Kahn immediately attacks the Empire, because Arn Abbas is killed, Jal Arn is seriously injured and cannot use the Destroyer, and John Gordon does not know his secret at all. The galaxy is frightened by the numerous ships of the enemy, the allies of the Empire - star barons and marquises - are hesitant, but John Gordon, who became the ruler of the Empire, shows determination and is ready to actually show the action of the Destroyer, not knowing the principles of its work and guided only by a brief instruction from Jal Arn.

Grandiose space battles shake the Galaxy, the fleets of the Empire and its allies suffer huge losses from the new weapons of the clouds, but Gordon still uses the Destroyer, which destroys the space-time itself, and destroys most of the Cloud fleet. Shorr Kahn died (as it turns out in the continuation of the dilogy - the novel "Return to the Stars", he faced the real threat of losing power after the defeat only staged death and fled), the Cloud was forced to surrender, John Gordon in the body of Zart Arna saved the Galaxy and won the love of Princess Lianna . But he must fulfill his last duty - again to exchange his mind with Zart Arn and return in due time.

Once in his body, John Gordon doubts whether all his adventures were real, and is in despair. But Princess Lianna, in love with him, followed him even into the 20th century, where he recognized her in her other body.

• After writing the sequel - The Return to the Stars - Edmond Hamilton changed the ending of the novel by removing the last few paragraphs. In particular, Lianna in the new version does not move to the 20th century - instead, she communicates with John telepathically and informs him that Zarth Arn is working on the problem of moving physical objects through time.
• In the USSR, repeated attempts were made to publish the novel "Star Kings". For example, such attempts were made by the coryphaeus of Soviet fiction I.A. Efremov . According to some reports, he wrote his famous “Andromeda Nebula” as a polemic with the novel by E. M. Hamilton, however, for ideological reasons, Hamilton’s novel was not published for a long time. Nevertheless, the novel was distributed in samizdat in an unedited, draft version of the translation by Z. Bobryr .
• The first official publication of the novel took place in the journal Technique - Youth , 1988, No. 5-12. The text of the translation by Z. Bobyr was edited by M. Romanenko. The publication of the novel was accompanied by illustrations by the artist Robert Avotin .

• Edmond Hamilton. Star kings. Stories. - Young Guard, 1990. - 256 p. - 100,000 copies. - ISBN 5-235-01202-X .
• Edmond Hamilton. Star kings. Return to the stars. - Golden Gate, PKP Janus, 1992 .-- 302 p. - (Star Fiction. Issue 1). - 100,000 copies. - ISBN 5-8257-0016-1 .
• Edmond Hamilton. Star kings. - Ufa: Publishing house of the Bashkir RK KP RSFSR, 1991. - 256 p. - 100,000 copies. - ISBN 5-85215-004-5 , 5-235-01202-X.
• Edmond Hamilton. Star kings. - Chisinau: Publisher "EJ", 1993. - Compiled by V. P. Kirchev (Foreign Science Fiction. Issue 22). - 512 s. - 52,000 copies. - ISBN 5-85268-051-6 .

• Yaroslav Khoroshkov. Riding a rocket (Russian) // World of fiction: magazine. - Moscow: TekhnoMir, 2003. - Issue. 1 . - S. 19-22 .

• Star Kings on the Fantasy Lab website

• Star Kings in the library of Maxim Moshkov