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Post by deuce on Apr 26, 2017 19:45:08 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on May 12, 2017 18:59:22 GMT -5
This painting by Jeffrey Jones is of Scheherazade from the Arabian Nights. With a slight shift further into the red spectrum of the palette, I could see this easily being a portrait of Sharane from The Ship of Ishtar. A pity that Jones never did illos for any Merritt tales.
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Post by deuce on May 13, 2017 22:50:46 GMT -5
I always dug that cover. That isn't a Hannes Bok piece, is it? It doesn't look like it to me. Doesn't look like Bok to me either. Unless he adopted a very different style for it. Looks kind of like Will Eisner to me, though I suspect that's less likely than it being Bok. Eisner is who it reminded me of. He was pretty much at his peak when that edition was published, but there isn't a whisper online about it. If it was Eisner, you'd think the word would be out. As it is, there's crickets as far as who actually did do it. I will say it doesn't look like anything I've ever seen from Bok. Whoever did it, did a job to be proud of. Here are a couple of Eisner femme fatales to give people an idea of what we're talkin' about... The dustjacket for The Black Wheel by...?
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Post by deuce on May 17, 2017 8:27:47 GMT -5
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jun 5, 2017 8:29:38 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jun 12, 2017 8:03:19 GMT -5
Altus Press has a great new edition of The Moon Pool coming out: www.altuspress.com/shop/the-moon-pool-the-conquest-of-the-moon-pool-the-argosy-library/As noted in the link, this edition reprints the separate novellas that Merritt later combined -- and edited, somewhat -- to form the novel version of The Moon Pool. The first novella is the one which blew Lovecraft's mind when it appeared in Argosy and which he praised until his death. All book reprints -- until now -- have reprinted the combined version. This is a first. As a bonus, this edition contains all of the illos that Virgil Finlay ever did for The Moon Pool.
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Post by deuce on Jun 21, 2017 15:48:16 GMT -5
Jay Barnson -- blogger, game designer and PulpRev author -- just sent me this message: I just got started reading Merritt, and my reaction was pretty similar to that which I've heard elsewhere: "Wow, why hadn't I heard of this guy before?!?!?"
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Post by deuce on Jun 22, 2017 21:20:04 GMT -5
Yeah, Liptak tends to do good work and that's a pretty good article. However, his remark about Francis Stevens is just perpetuating a meme that's been around for awhile. Francis Stevens was not some huge influence on Merritt. The facts just don't add up and I have yet to see the authentic quote where Merritt said she was an influence. Terence Hanley over at the Tellers of Weird Tales website has done a lot of research into the question. Check out the link below. The way Hanley has written his posts, it really isn't necessary to read them in any particular order. tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/search/label/Francis%20StevensI've read a few of Stevens' stories. Her style was similar to Merritt's and she was a good writer. However, she never matched Merritt in my opinion. For anyone who wants to check out her work, much of her oeuvre can be found here in some very nice etexts: ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stevens/francis/
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Post by deuce on Jun 27, 2017 16:44:23 GMT -5
Haha! Sorry dude, I guess I let the cat outta the bag. I have one on the way - I've enjoyed many anthologies by Sam Moskowitz so this will be great, I have no doubt. A good friend of mine has a birthday approaching so I splurged on a second copy for him even though I'd already ordered him a copy of Red World of Polaris (the Capt. Volmar stories by CAS which are excellent). He got me some really nice Christmas gifts and just wanted to do something extra nice for his birthday He's the good friend for whom I wrote the poem ' No Finer Hour' posted in Pit of Set and is quite worth the investment. Don't sweat it. I'll get hold of a copy one of these days. BTW, here's a review from a prof who is also a Merritt fan: As the definitive primary source on Merritt, Reflections in the Moon Pool achieves its objective. It may not win new converts, but it will have to be consulted by anyone doing work in this area in the future, and may even be of value to historians of journalism interested in the daily workings of Hearst's immensely popular American Weekly. Furthermore, like many such devotional works, A. Merritt is a handsomely bound volume, complete with a selection of photographs and a Stephen Fabian dust jacket that could bring back Theda Bara.Just found out some belated sad news. The person who wrote the review above was Michael Levy. He died a few months ago in April. Levy was well-respected, well-liked and one of the few academics who would stand up for A. Merritt. We can't afford to lose too many like him. Here is a short bio/remembrance of Mike: bestsciencefictionbooks.com/blog/mike-levy/This is the edition of The Moon Pool which he edited:
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jun 28, 2017 11:49:43 GMT -5
Don't sweat it. I'll get hold of a copy one of these days. BTW, here's a review from a prof who is also a Merritt fan: As the definitive primary source on Merritt, Reflections in the Moon Pool achieves its objective. It may not win new converts, but it will have to be consulted by anyone doing work in this area in the future, and may even be of value to historians of journalism interested in the daily workings of Hearst's immensely popular American Weekly. Furthermore, like many such devotional works, A. Merritt is a handsomely bound volume, complete with a selection of photographs and a Stephen Fabian dust jacket that could bring back Theda Bara.Just found out some belated sad news. The person who wrote the review above was Michael Levy. He died a few months ago in April. Levy was well-respected, well-liked and one of the few academics who would stand up for A. Merritt. We can't afford to lose too many like him. Here is a short bio/remembrance of Mike: bestsciencefictionbooks.com/blog/mike-levy/This is the edition of The Moon Pool which he edited: He sounds like one of those guys you'd just love to sit down and chat with for a couple hours. I'll have to put his edition of Moon Pool on my want-list.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jun 28, 2017 12:03:20 GMT -5
Yeah, Liptak tends to do good work and that's a pretty good article. However, his remark about Francis Stevens is just perpetuating a meme that's been around for awhile. Francis Stevens was not some huge influence on Merritt. The facts just don't add up and I have yet to see the authentic quote where Merritt said she was an influence. Terence Hanley over at the Tellers of Weird Tales website has done a lot of research into the question. Check out the link below. The way Hanley has written his posts, it really isn't necessary to read them in any particular order. tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/search/label/Francis%20StevensI've read a few of Stevens' stories. Her style was similar to Merritt's and she was a good writer. However, she never matched Merritt in my opinion. For anyone who wants to check out her work, much of her oeuvre can be found here in some very nice etexts: ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stevens/francis/I agree - Merritt was talented enough not to have a need to emulate anyone. However, Reflections in the Moon Pool by Sam Moskowitz does indeed have examples of Merritt's mentioning Stevens' works in admiration. He was most certainly a 'fan' and we can possibly leave it at that. As a fan, however, he might have allowed her to influence him in some small fashion, who can say. As soon as I can I'll post excerpts for posterity. I only have the three Carroll & Graf editions of Stevens' works, but enjoyed all three (Claimed, Heads of Cerberus, Citadel of Fear).
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jul 13, 2017 12:54:42 GMT -5
Yeah, Liptak tends to do good work and that's a pretty good article. However, his remark about Francis Stevens is just perpetuating a meme that's been around for awhile. Francis Stevens was not some huge influence on Merritt. The facts just don't add up and I have yet to see the authentic quote where Merritt said she was an influence. Terence Hanley over at the Tellers of Weird Tales website has done a lot of research into the question. Check out the link below. The way Hanley has written his posts, it really isn't necessary to read them in any particular order. tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/search/label/Francis%20StevensI've read a few of Stevens' stories. Her style was similar to Merritt's and she was a good writer. However, she never matched Merritt in my opinion. For anyone who wants to check out her work, much of her oeuvre can be found here in some very nice etexts: ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stevens/francis/Some references from Reflections in the Moon Pool on Francis Stevens.
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Post by deuce on Aug 29, 2017 0:33:04 GMT -5
Cory Panshin is a Hugo-winning author and scholar of science fiction. In the link below is her afterword to the Phoenix Pick edition of The Moon Pool: www.panshin.com/trogholm/moonpool.htmlWhile I can't say I agree with all of her assertions, it certainly makes for interesting reading. " During the opening decades of the 20th century, when the scientific romance was evolving into modern science fiction, Abraham Merritt was arguably the most popular and certainly the most influential writer of the genre. Between the late Teens and the early 1930s, his stories were more colorful, his prose more extravagant, and his ideas more radically speculative than anyone else's."
-- Cory Panshin
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Nov 11, 2017 8:34:29 GMT -5
Would anyone know where an online image of Ned Dameron's original art for the Donald M Grant edition of The Face in the Abyss might be found? Not an image of the book cover, just the painting.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2017 11:06:56 GMT -5
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