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Post by deuce on Jan 19, 2017 22:46:38 GMT -5
A. (Abraham) Merritt's birthday is tomorrow and we need a thread on him. Along with Edgar Rice Burroughs, he was the driving force in sci-fi/fantasy/exotic adventure in the first half of the 20th century. Not even ERB sold more copies per book in the still nascent "weird"/sci-fi genre. It was common 20yrs ago to compare how Merritt sold in the '20s, '30s and '40s to how Stephen King sold in the '80s and '90s. Today, Rowling or GRRM would be a good comparison. Just under one-third of Merritt's novels were made into movies. Like ERB, Merritt's influence was vast. Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Max Brand/Frederick Faust, Edmond Hamilton, August Derleth, CL Moore, Jack Williamson, Leah Bodine Drake, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, RH Barlow, Hugo Gernsback, E.E. "Doc" Smith, A.E. van Vogt, Leigh Brackett, Robert Bloch, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Andre Norton, Donald A. Wollheim, Gardner F. Fox, Henry Kuttner, Sam Moskowitz, Julius Schwartz, A. Bertram Chandler, Lester Del Rey, James Gunn, Frederik Pohl, Algis Budrys -- all admired him. The same can be said for newer authors like Moorcock, Mike Resnick, Barry N. Malzberg, Lin Carter, Robert Silverberg, Ray Capella, Brian Stableford, Anne McCaffrey, Stephen King, Karl Edward Wagner, Fred Chappell, CJ Cherryh, Brian Lumley, Robert Weinberg, Gary Gygax, Ben P. Indick, Sheri S. Tepper, Keith Taylor, Robin McKinley, Marvin Kaye, Baird Searles, Ardath Mayhar, Gardner Dozois, Eileen Kernaghan, Piers Anthony, Stephen Hickman, Ed Gorman, Orson Scott Card, SM Stirling, Tim Powers, Raymond E. Feist, Elizabeth Hand, Frank Lauria, Cory Panshin, Douglas Preston, John C. Wright, Paul di Filippo, Charles R. Rutledge, John C. Hocking, Adrian Cole, Robin Wayne Bailey, Dave Hardy, John C. Tibbetts, Steve Rasnic Tem, Ryan Harvey, Christopher Chupik, Keith West, Fraser Sherman, JD Cowan, William Meikle, John E. Boyle, Brian Niemeier, Jim Fear and Aonghus Fallon. Now, imagine if none of those authors ever wrote fantasy or sci-fi. At the least, imagine if some of the wild imagination and wonder was taken from their works. Weird/speculative fiction would be completely different without Merritt. Also, don’t forget that Bloch and Wagner admired him for his horror writing. Merritt's imagination was, in my opinion, mind-boggling. He essentially wrote "Lovecraftian" fiction before Lovecraft, starting with The People of the Pit. He could also write great straight-ahead fantasy adventure in novels like The Ship of Ishtar, Seven Footprints to Satan, The Face in the Abyss and The Dwellers in the Mirage -- all of which influenced REH in my opinion (and others agree). I sometimes find new readers gripe that Merritt seems to write about "stuff that's been done before". Guess what? Merritt invented that "stuff". Again and again and again. He was the source and godfather for so much that we love today in pulp-style fantasy. Where do you think REH got the idea for sword and sorcery? Where do you think Moorcock got the idea for ships traveling between dimensions and other wild-ass insanity? Who was CL Moore's favorite author? Hail to a forgotten titan of the weird tale! infogalactic.com/info/A._Merrittwww.fantasticfiction.com/m/a-merritt/web.archive.org/web/20120722083933/http://www.empmuseum.org/exhibitions/index.asp?articleID=945
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Post by deuce on Jan 21, 2017 0:22:44 GMT -5
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Post by almuric on Jan 21, 2017 9:14:40 GMT -5
It's a shame that he's been virtually forgotten, but that just means he can be rediscovered by a new generation. :-)
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Post by deuce on Jan 23, 2017 2:30:14 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jan 24, 2017 13:45:57 GMT -5
Forry Ackerman talks about attending the very first Worldcon with Ray Bradbury. They made a point of visiting Merritt at his American Weekly office: Ray Bradbury was a member of that first Worldcon; back in 1939, he was busy getting autographs rather than giving them. My recollection to this day is that I lent him fifty bucks so he could spend three and a half days and nights on a Greyhound bus to get there. I am told that every time that Ray Bradbury tells this story, the loan keeps going up and up in value in his memory -- it's gotten up to ninety-five dollars now! It took him a year or two, but he finally managed to pay it back. Ray had deliberately gone to the convention carrying a portfolio of work by Hannes Bok. I remember accompanying him later to the office of Weird Tales, meeting Farnsworth Wright, who was a rather emaciated-looking individual. At that time he had Parkinson's Disease -- he could just barely sign an autograph for us, but he took one look at Hannes Bok's work and immediately accepted it.
Ray Cummings, the legendary author, attended the convention. We had hoped that A. Merritt might attend also, but he was busy being the Sunday section editor of The American Weekly. So the day after the convention, a little group of us -- 6 or 8 fans -- got together and visited him. Someone had phoned, and he was waiting to meet us in his office. The now-deceased fan Dale Hart was so excited he was going to meet A. Merritt that he got up and he brushed his teeth with shaving cream! He was really foaming at the mouth! While we were in the anteroom, waiting for Merritt, along came Virgil Finlay, who was doing work for American Weekly and Merritt. He had a marvelous portfolio of these originals, and our eyes were popping out of our heads to see his incredible classy work. Well, about ten minutes later, we were ushered into Merritt's office -- he was a little on the deaf side, so we all clustered around. He was extremely cordial to us, and made us fans feel quite welcome. Not only was Abe a great writer, he took time out of his busy day (at a very high-paying job) to accommodate some teenaged fanboys who wandered in off the street. Merritt only lived a few more years. Some Finlay art from Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar:
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jan 24, 2017 20:44:55 GMT -5
I recall, in those halcyon days long before the advent of the internet, when titles such as Burn Witch Burn, Creep Shadow Creep, The Black Wheel and The Fox Woman, elusive, scarce, hardly to he found titles, were holy grails to me and a very small clique of friends who, like myself, considered Merritt's work 'top shelf', sitting right beside our Howards and Lovecrafts and all the other pulp authors of that era. I remember, like it was yesterday, crouching in dingy used bookstores, scrounging for any edition of any one of these titles, at last coming upon what we called the 'oval Avon' edition of Fox Woman and Others. The scarcer ones came much later, from Pandoras Books (IIRC). The thrill of the chase. The pot of gold. The gem among gems. That's how we felt as we sought the polished prose of the man we always simply referred to as... Merritt.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jan 25, 2017 10:51:02 GMT -5
Does anyone have this? The description sounds like a must have for the Merritt fan. I've looked at it before, years ago, and now it has caught my interest again.
A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool by Sam Moskowitz. Published in 1985 by Oswald Train. From the publisher:
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Post by deuce on Jan 26, 2017 13:30:01 GMT -5
Does anyone have this? The description sounds like a must have for the Merritt fan. I've looked at it before, years ago, and now it has caught my interest again.
A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool by Sam Moskowitz. Published in 1985 by Oswald Train. From the publisher: To be honest, I haven't mentioned this book because I have yet to buy it and didn't want to tighten up the supply. From everything I've seen and heard, this should be on the shelf of every Merritt enthusiast.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jan 26, 2017 15:17:29 GMT -5
Does anyone have this? The description sounds like a must have for the Merritt fan. I've looked at it before, years ago, and now it has caught my interest again.
A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool by Sam Moskowitz. Published in 1985 by Oswald Train. From the publisher: To be honest, I haven't mentioned this book because I have yet to buy it and didn't want to tighten up the supply. From everything I've seen and heard, this should be on the shelf of every Merritt enthusiast. 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.
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Post by deuce on Jan 27, 2017 15:28:56 GMT -5
Merritt (and REH) fan, Sandy Ferber, has done short reviews of basically every piece of Merritt's fiction here: www.fantasyliterature.com/fantasy-author/merrittabraham/IMO, he was pretty much spot-on most of the time, pointing out the flaws, but recognizing the vast imagination and storytelling skills of ol' Abe.
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Post by deuce on Jan 28, 2017 9:16:20 GMT -5
It's a shame that he's been virtually forgotten, but that just means he can be rediscovered by a new generation. :-) Exactly. I also think that literary trends and movements are in favor of a Merritt comeback (to one degree or another). We just have to get out and push.
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Post by deuce on Jan 28, 2017 16:27:11 GMT -5
To be honest, I haven't mentioned this book because I have yet to buy it and didn't want to tighten up the supply. From everything I've seen and heard, this should be on the shelf of every Merritt enthusiast. 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.
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Post by deuce on Feb 9, 2017 19:34:56 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Feb 13, 2017 12:57:06 GMT -5
Seven Footprints to Satan is probably the most "forgotten" novel by Merritt. Perhaps it's because there is no overt supernatural or "cosmic" element in it. That's too bad, because this is a great thriller in the Sax Rohmer or Ian Fleming mode. James Kirkham is a cool character. I've described him before as "Indiana Jones' more badass older brother...with a gambling habit." It is possible that this tale influenced REH's Skull-Face yarn, but I'll get into that in another post. Below is a good review of Merritt's novel: skullsinthestars.com/2012/07/20/a-merritts-seven-footprints-to-satan/James Kirkham from Chapter 1: The clock was striking eight as I walked out of the doors of the Discoverers' Club and stood for a moment looking down lower Fifth Avenue. As I paused, I felt with full force that uncomfortable sensation of being watched that had both puzzled and harassed me for the past two weeks. A curiously prickly, cold feeling somewhere deep under the skin on the side that the watchers are located; an odd sort of tingling pressure. It is a queer sort of a sensitivity that I have in common with most men who spend much of their lives in the jungle or desert. It is a throwback to some primitive sixth sense, since all savages have it until they get introduced to the white man's liquor.
Who was it that was watching me? And why? Someone from China who had followed after the treasure I had taken from the ancient tomb? I could not believe it. Kin-Wang, bandit though he might be, and accomplished graduate of American poker as well as of Cornell, would have sent no spies after me. Our, well—call it transaction, irregular as it had been, was finished in his mind when he had lost. Crooked as he might be with the cards, he was not the man to go back on his word. Of that I was sure. Besides, there had been no need of letting me get this far before striking. No, they were no emissaries of Kin-Wang.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Feb 13, 2017 14:45:04 GMT -5
Merritt (and REH) fan, Sandy Ferber, has done short reviews of basically every piece of Merritt's fiction here: www.fantasyliterature.com/fantasy-author/merrittabraham/IMO, he was pretty much spot-on most of the time, pointing out the flaws, but recognizing the vast imagination and storytelling skills of ol' Abe. That is such a wicked DJ. Wish mine had the cover. Cool interior illustrations though in both this title and The Fox Woman and The Blue Pagoda. It appears the DJ on FW&BP is only a plain unmarked wrap? A shame because Bok's illustrations would have been awesome on a DJ. Also odd they put a nice DJ on one yet not the other.
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