|
Post by deuce on Feb 14, 2017 16:56:50 GMT -5
A Silent One of Muria from The Moon Pool, as rendered by Wayne Barlowe... "I think," I said, even more cautiously, "that the race to which the Three belong never appeared on earth's surface; that their development took place here, unhindered through aeons. And if this be true, the structure of their brains, and therefore all their reactions, must be different from ours. Hence their knowledge and command of energies unfamiliar to us—and hence also the question whether they may not have an entirely different sense of values, of justice—and that is rather terrifying," I concluded.-- Dr. Walter T. Goodwin
|
|
|
Post by ChrisLAdams on Feb 15, 2017 12:13:06 GMT -5
When as a teen I discovered A. Merritt there were only four works myself and a couple of friends who'd become enamored with his writings could ever find in the book stalls, works we considered foundational. These were, of course, Face, Dwellers, Metal Monster and Ishtar. In the fronts and backs of these paperback editions there were always listed those illusory titles you could never find - almost as if they were little pots of gold at the end of rainbows... I'm referring to Creep Shadow Creep, Burn Witch Burn, The Black Wheel, Fox Woman & Others, ETC. I recall the first copy of Black Wheel I found - I about died. The sweet Oval Avon edition in sound, tight condition. If memory serves, I pulled it out of Soft Covers of Blacksburg, Va. Check one more off the list... With the discovery of Pandora Books we began mail ordering the scarcer Merritts (& REHs & ERBs & HPLs). And later, with the dawning of the age of the internet, when people began dusting off old copies of books they no longer wanted or knew nothing about we began to gather some of these other titles. It's no wonder then that I became enamored with both Burn! and Creep! - they were just so daggone rare in those days when I was absolutely consumed with collecting. I'm still fascinated with these and recently added three new additions to the collection. In the search for these I also stumbled on this 1934 Methuen edition of Burn that I'd love to have - alas, it is quite a top shelf edition and not attainable at the moment. Corgi, 1963
Dorchester, 1996 (Very cool double edition with both Burn and Creep) Orbit, 1974
Rare Methuen 1934 HC (Not in my collection, but maybe someday? :/ )
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 15, 2017 23:50:23 GMT -5
Ken Barr's full, gorgeous painting for The Fox Woman and Other Stories. An exquisite face... with sea-green, slanted eyes under a broad white brow... with hair of russet- red that came to a small peak in the center of that brow... a lock of silvery white shaped like the flame of a candle wavering in the wind... a nose long but delicate, the nostrils slightly flaring, daintily... a mouth small and red as the royal coral, heart-shaped, lips full, archaic. Over that exquisite face, like a veil, was faint mockery, a delicate malice that had in them little of the human. Her hands were white and long and slender.-- from The Fox Woman, by A. Merritt
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 16, 2017 19:11:03 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. Chris, this has your name written all over it: www.firstsmagazine.com/Mar14.htmlWhat makes it even cooler is, it looks like it details all the textual variations, which are a real problem with Merritt editions. Back issues are still available.
|
|
|
Post by ChrisLAdams on Feb 17, 2017 11:05:36 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. Chris, this has your name written all over it: www.firstsmagazine.com/Mar14.htmlWhat makes it even cooler is, it looks like it details all the textual variations, which are a real problem with Merritt editions. Back issues are still available. Deuce, I do love my books! The 1sts I'd love are typically far out of my price range unfortunately. A typical example of what I'd love to have in my collection would be: Outsider and Others, Akham House 1939, Skull Face and Others, Arkham House 1946, The House on the Borderland, Arkham House 1946, etc. On a trip to Ashville, NC last year I came across that House in a nice used/rare book store - very cool to come across something like that in person. A cool Merritt I have in VG cond in DJ is Creep Shadow, from 1934. Here's a snap of the jacket. Not my copy, mine is actually in better cond.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 20, 2017 8:52:04 GMT -5
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. Yeah, I've always dug that cover. That isn't a Hannes Bok piece, is it? It doesn't look like it to me.
|
|
|
Post by emerald on Feb 20, 2017 9:55:25 GMT -5
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. Yeah, I've 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.
|
|
|
Post by ChrisLAdams on Feb 20, 2017 21:28:31 GMT -5
Yeah, I've 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. No idea who did the covers for these as neither of my copies has the jacket. Bok did the interior illustrations however, and many of them would have been awesome on the cover. For instance - his nude of the Fox Woman is epic.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 22, 2017 16:31:23 GMT -5
No idea who did the covers for these as neither of my copies has the jacket. Bok did the interior illustrations however, and many of them would have been awesome on the cover. For instance - his nude of the Fox Woman is epic. I have to admit that I'm fairly ambiguous when it comes to Bok. Some of his stuff blows me away and a lot definitely doesn't. I can see why other people dig his work, but much of it is a little too stylized for my tastes. However, Bok is rated as one of the great fantasy/weird artists of his era and Merritt discovered him, so that's cool. I also give Bok props for being such a Merritt fan and striving hard to promote AM's work after Merritt died.
|
|
|
Post by ChrisLAdams on Feb 23, 2017 10:07:03 GMT -5
No idea who did the covers for these as neither of my copies has the jacket. Bok did the interior illustrations however, and many of them would have been awesome on the cover. For instance - his nude of the Fox Woman is epic. I have to admit that I'm fairly ambiguous when it comes to Bok. Some of his stuff blows me away and a lot definitely doesn't. I can see why other people dig his work, but much of it is a little too stylized for my tastes. However, Bok is rated as one of the great fantasy/weird artists of his era and Merritt discovered him, so that's cool. I also give Bok props for being such a Merritt fan and striving hard to promote AM's work after Merritt died. Yes indeed, his work is very stylized and I'm admittedly not as familiar with it as I'd like to be. I have read his works that Lin Carter included in his excellent Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (Beyond the Golden Stair, The Sorcerer's Ship). I've also read The Black Wheel, an A. Merritt story he completed, but have yet to read The Blue Pagoda, another Merritt he completed posthumously. His artwork kind of reminds me of a blending of Picaso, Finlay and Salvador Dalí in some respects, while in others it just looks like - Bok. One of these days I'll invest in some of the hardbound volumes of these artists I admire so much (Finlay, Bok, Frazetta, etc). Another artist I'd really love to see more examples of is from the aforementioned Ballantine series - Gervasio Gallardo. He did some of my favorite covers in that series (Poseidonis, Imaginary Worlds, Waters of the Wondrous Isles, etc), not to mention the Lovecraft covers he did which were magnificent.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 26, 2017 17:00:58 GMT -5
Merritt, The Moon Pool, archaeological adventurers and Indiana Jones: matthewrettino.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/archaeological-adventure-fiction-i-indiana-jones-and-the-genre-of-enlightenment/One thing the blogger (and David Hartwell) didn't mention is that Kenton in The Ship of Ishtar and Kirkham in Seven Footprints to Satan are also "archaeological adventurers'. In fact, I would say a mash-up of Kenton and Kirkham (with a little bit of Goodwin from The Moon Pool) would look quite a bit like Indy. Leif Langdon of The Dwellers in the Mirage, while a "mere" engineer (and badass), accompanied an ethnographic/archaeological expedition to Mongolia. Caranac in Creep, Shadow, Creep was an anthropologist who'd been to some wacky corners of the world as well. He could throw down pretty good in a pinch, too. I'm sensing a pattern here... In real life, Merritt spent time in Central America as a young man exploring ancient ruins.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 1, 2017 21:02:02 GMT -5
Dwellers in the Mirage, by Abraham Merritt. Wow. It's not every day you read a book that blends Norse, Uigur and Native mythology into a lost race story. Leif Landgon and his Cherokee blood-brother James T. Eagles discover a volcanic valley in Alaska hidden behind a mirage. There Leif discovers that he is the reincarnation of Dwayanu, a pretty bad guy who has the power to summon the evil demon-god Khalk'ru. Along the way he falls in love with the beautiful good girl Evalie, but is also tempted by the equally beautiful bad girl Lur, the Wolf Witch. It's a bit racy for the period. Leif and Evalie have sex before they get married. Later, when Leif becomes Dwayanu, he gets it on with Lur. Typical of a lot of early 20th century fantasy, there's some gestures in the direction of scientific explanations for the various phenomena which the reader can accept or reject. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Some people call that progress. I call it a tragedy. Dwellers in the Mirage is pretty damned awesome. Probably my second-most favorite Merritt novel -- though it's always hard to narrow things down like that. Many people don't realize just how much influence DitM has exerted on fantasy and sci-fi, but especially sword and sorcery. It was serialized in Argosy right before REH created Conan. Like a month before. Lur the Wolf-Witch probably had a major influence on the creation of CL Moore's Jirel. Moore was a huge Merritt fan. Brackett's Sword of Rhiannon is centered on a man possessed by the soul of another, sinister entity out of the past -- just like in "Dwellers". CL Moore and Kuttner repeated the formula in The Dark World. In Karl Edward Wagner's Bloodstone, a sinister badass comes into possession of a bejewelled ring which is only part of a greater stone. The ring can bring an alien entity into our world. All of that? Pretty much the plot of DitM. I'll go deeper into that stuff some other time. Right now, I wanna bitch about cover art. For such an awesome novel, full of action as well as visually interesting characters and monsters, "Dwellers" has never really had a truly great cover. Some have been pretty good, some not. This is the worst: I don't know if that is a Rodney Matthews piece, but whoever it was completely dropped the ball. This one is actually pretty good, other than it's a little busy and the palette is kinda washed out. But, hey, let's play a little "What if?" here. Ken Barr did a great cover for Avon's Fox Woman edition. What if he'd brought some barbaric fury to Leif/Dwayanu like this Ka-Zar cover? He couldn't do worse than the utter fail of the first cover I posted. While we're dreaming... When Doug Rosa was doing those competent Merritt covers for Avon in the '60s, Frazetta was still working cheap for Ace and Lancer. Considering the Norse angle of "Dwellers", something like this would be in the ballpark. Can you imagine a Frazetta cover with Dwayanu and Lur on it? BAM! So yeah, I'm still waitin' for an iconic "Dwellers" cover.
|
|
|
Post by ChrisLAdams on Mar 3, 2017 8:15:57 GMT -5
Dwellers in the Mirage is pretty damned awesome. Probably my second-most favorite Merritt novel -- though it's always hard to narrow things down like that. I'll go deeper into that stuff some other time. Right now, I wanna bitch about cover art. For such an awesome novel, full of action as well as visually interesting characters and monsters, "Dwellers" has never really had a truly great cover. Some have been pretty good, some not. While we're dreaming... When Doug Rosa was doing those competent Merritt covers for Avon in the '60s, Frazetta was still working cheap for Ace and Lancer. Considering the Norse angle of "Dwellers", something like this would be in the ballpark. Can you imagine a Frazetta cover with Dwayanu and Lur on it? BAM! So yeah, I'm still waitin' for an iconic "Dwellers" cover. How bout a Boris!
|
|
|
Post by ChrisLAdams on Mar 3, 2017 8:18:57 GMT -5
Another cool French edition....
|
|
|
Post by ChrisLAdams on Mar 3, 2017 8:33:02 GMT -5
These French editions are <ahem> interesting to say the least...
|
|