Post by johnnypt on Sept 12, 2017 13:41:10 GMT -5
I finally got a hold of all three Berkley editions recently, finding some decently priced versions on Amazon. It's an absolute sin we didn't get a full set of these. And not even necessarily for the stories themselves: back in the 70s they were the only place to get the stories by themselves, today those stories are the most easily accessible ones. Wagner's introductions and afterwards are still essential reading, even after 40 years. A lot of the things I know today have come from these, I just didn't know it!
Since I've been on this "What If" kick recently, what would a full set have looked like? Each of the existing volumes run in the mid 290s and printed the following stories:
Volume 1-Hour of the Dragon
Hour of the Dragon
Volume 2-People of the Black Circle
The Devil In Iron
The People of the Black Circle
A Witch Shall Be Born
Jewels of Gwahlur
Volume 3-Red Nails
Beyond the Black River
Shadows in Zamboula
Red Nails
The Hyborian Age
For the 9 remaining stories from Weird Tales, they could have easily fit in a paperback around that size:
Volume 4-Phoenix on the Sword
Phoenix on the Sword
The Scarlet Citadel
Tower of the Elephant
Black Colossus
The Slithering Shadow
Pool of the Black One
Rogues in the House
Shadows in the Moonlight
Queen of the Black Coast
And if Wagner was able, he'd likely have done a final volume consisting at least of the finished stories (the fragments and synopses were probably out of reach for the purposes of this series)
:
Volume 5-The Black Stranger
The Frost Giant's Daughter
The God in the Bowl
Vale of Lost Women
The Black Stranger
I could also envision a 6 volume series where Volume 4 was split in half, with the first 5 stories in Volume 4 and the final four plus both versions of the Frost Giant's Daughter in Volume 5, with the remaining three in Volume 6.
Ah, what might have been.