Edmond Hamilton is the original creator credited for the anime Captain Future Kareinaru Taiyokei Race. He was an American writer of science fiction, born on October 21, 1904, in Youngstown, Ohio, and passed away on February 1, 1977, in Lancaster, California. While he is primarily known as a foundational figure in American pulp science fiction, his work became the source material for notable Japanese anime productions in the late 1970s.

Hamilton began his writing career in the mid-1920s, with his first story appearing in Weird Tales magazine in 1926. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he became a central figure in the pulp magazine era, celebrated for his grand, imaginative space operas. His prolific output and dramatic, large-scale stories earned him nicknames such as The World Wrecker. He was a contemporary and friend of other major writers like Jack Williamson and, in 1946, married fellow science fiction author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett.

Hamilton's most significant contribution to the world of anime is the Captain Future series. The character Captain Future was created by editors Mort Weisinger and Leo Margulies, but Hamilton was the primary author who wrote the vast majority of the stories published in the Captain Future pulp magazine from 1940 to 1944 and in subsequent issues of Startling Stories through 1951. The stories follow the adventures of Curtis Newton, a brilliant scientist and adventurer known as Captain Future, who travels through the solar system with his unusual companions: the living brain Professor Simon Wright, the robot Grag, and the android Otho. The original pulp series was aimed at juvenile readers and featured a blend of science, mystery, and heroic action.

In 1978, the Japanese animation studio Toei Animation produced a television anime series based on Hamilton's Captain Future novels. That same year, the studio also created a television special titled Captain Future Kareinaru Taiyokei Race, which translates to The Magnificent Solar System Race. For this production, Edmond Hamilton is formally credited as the original author and source of the idea. The special, directed by Tomoharu Katsumata and broadcast on NHK on December 31, 1978, features the core characters from the novels and follows Captain Future as he investigates the disappearance of spaceships by entering a dangerous intergalactic race. The anime adaptation of Captain Future, including this special, was later exported to many countries in Europe, such as France, Italy, and Germany, where it became highly popular and introduced Hamilton's work to a new generation of fans.

Beyond the Captain Future franchise, Hamilton had a long and varied career. He was a pioneer of the space opera subgenre, helping to define its conventions alongside authors like E.E. Doc Smith. He also wrote extensively for DC Comics for over two decades, from 1942 to 1966, contributing to major titles like Superman and Batman and co-creating characters such as Batwoman and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Later in his career, he wrote more mature and critically regarded novels such as The Star Kings and The Haunted Stars. Hamilton's legacy as an original creator in the context of anime rests squarely on his Captain Future stories, which provided the complete narrative blueprint, character designs, and world for the subsequent Japanese adaptation. The ongoing interest in his work is demonstrated by new projects, such as a French manga adaptation of Captain Future published in 2024, which was produced with the cooperation of Hamilton's family and Toei Animation.