Tag Archives: birthday

Musing on Merritt

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Abraham Merritt (1884-1943) was born on this date, January 20.

Writing under the byline of just his first initial and surname, A. Merritt was at one time one of the most respected and influential fantasy authors in the country, if not the world. Sadly he has lapsed into obscurity.

Part of the reason for that, I think, is that his output was small, something that makes his reputation even more impressive. Merritt was an editor at The American Weekly, first as an assistant (1912-1937) and then editor until his death.

I’ve read some of his short stories and one novel, Dwellers in the Mirage, which I need to reread and do a post about it. I really liked it and am looking forward to fitting more of his work into my reading.

If you’ve not read Merritt, give him a shot.

The Greatest Hits of Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was born today, January 19. There are few writers who have had the influence of Poe. He cast a long shadow over his contemporaries, as I discussed here. He was one of the greatest scribes of darkness. And his work is dark.

But it’s also very, very good.

So many of his tales, poems, and stories are classics. “The Raven”. “The Fall of the House of Usher”. “The Pit and the Pendulum”. “The Cask of Amontillado”. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. “The Gold-Bug”. The Masque of the Red Death”. “The Premature Burial”. “The Black Cat”. “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

So let me throw this question out. If you were going to put together a collection Poe’s best works, a greatest hits collection, if you will, what would you include, and why?

Klar-Kash-Ton

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Today, January 13, is the birthday of one of the greatest writers of fantasy of the Twentieth Century or any other. Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was one of the big three in what many consider to be the best years of Weird Tales. The other two are Robert E Howard and H. P. Lovecraft.

I last looked at some of Smith’s work last summer when I reviewed Zothique from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. I had started Hyperborea, which was the next volume Lin Carter published in that line, but summer school started. Trying to figure out how to teach online in a summer session was time consuming, and I never got back to it.  I’m going to try to get back to in sometime in the next few months.

Smith doesn’t seem to be as well-known these days as REH and HPL. Part of that, I think, is because his writing isn’t light and breezy. Neither are Howard’s nor Lovecraft’s, but Smith used a vocabulary that was extensive. As a result reading him can be something of a challenge. You see, kids, back in the day, we had these things called dictionaries, and anytime we didn’t know what a word, meant, well, we just looked ’em up. Now git off my lawn.

I’m not sure what story of Smith’s I’m going to read tonight. Maybe I’ll reread “The City of the Singing Flame”. It was the first story by CAS I ever read. I was in the seventh grade, and the junior high library had a nice collection of Robert Silverberg anthologies. It was in one of those.

Regardless, I’ll raise my glass to Clark Ashton Smith and enjoy some of his fiction this evening.

Jack London

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Jack London (1876-1916) was born today, January 12. London was one of Robert E Howard’s favorite writer, which is why he is of importance to this blog.

I must admit I haven’t read much by London. Of course I read “To Build a Fire” in school. I mean, who hasn’t? I’ve also read “A Relic of the Pliocene” and “Moonface”. I’ve enjoyed all of them, but beyond that I don’t think I’ve read any of his other works.  I think I may have read a little bit of The Call of the Wild when I was a kid, but if I did, I didn’t get very far into it. I have vague memories that it was a bit beyond my reading level at the time.

So I’m going to try to read more London this year. I want to have a better understanding and appreciation of the writers who influenced my favorites.

 

John Myers Myers and The Harp and the Blade

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John Myers Myers (1906-1988) was born on this date, January 11. He is best remembered as the author of Silverlock. If you haven’t read it, you should. Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle, and Gordon R. Dickson number among its fans.

But that’s not the book I want to talk about today.I had seen copies of The Harp and the Blade floating around when I was in high school, but I didn’t know much about it. I was more into science fiction at the time and didn’t read it. (I didn’t read Silverlock until I was in college.) Deuce Richardson recommended it to me recently. So I read it for this post.

I wish I had read it years ago. I started and finished the book in under 24 hours. It’s a great medieval fantasy. Finnian is a wandering Irish bard making his way through France. The book indicates the year is about 950 or so. After watching a local warlord murder a young man in a tavern, he goes on his way. Later that night a Druid curses him by making him anyone in  need as long as he stays in the druid’s land.

Soon the curse begins to take effect. Finnian finds himself aiding another man named Conan, who is trying to establish his own domain. No, not that Conan. This story is set in France, not Aquilonia. Finnian only wants to go on his way. It’s not going to be that easy. Every time he thinks he is free to move on, someone needs his aid.

The story moves briskly, with more action and character development than many fantasy novels twice the length. There are battles and personal feuds, songs and poetry, and romance. Not everything ends well.

If you like historical fantasy, with likeable characters, dastardly villains, and lots of action, check this one out.

Happy Birthday, Professor Tolkien

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J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was born on this day, January 3.

It has become fashionable to bash on Tolkien for not being sufficiently woke or for taking up too much shelf space in bookstores. One marketing technique is now to make controversial statements about his and his work if you have a book coming out. Such tactics and complaints are the habits of lesser writers.

Tolkien was the greatest fantasy author of the 20th Century. This is a hill I am prepared to die on. (Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H. P. Lovecraft aren’t far behind.)

Most people are familiar with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. His other writings, not so much. Sadly, I have to include myself in that group. I’ve not read enough of his other work, although I’ve read bits and pieces. That’s something I intend to correct over the coming year.

I’m open to suggestions as to what some of you who are better read would recommend as a starting point.

Beaumont’s “Free Dirt”

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Charles Beaumont

Today, January 2, is the birthday of Charles Beaumont (1929-1967). If there was an episode of the original Twilight Zone that stuck in your head when you say it, chances are good Beaumont wrote it.

Mentored by Ray Bradbury, Beaumont would have been a major writer if he had lived. He died from early onset Alzheimer’s or something very much like it. Beaumont, like Bradbury, was primarily a short story writer, although he wrote a number of movie scripts. Continue reading →

Seabury Quinn

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Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn was born on New Year’s Day, 1889. He died Christmas Eve, 1969. At one time he was the most popular author publishing in Weird Tales. These days, his fame pales in comparison to that of HPL, REH, and CAS.Some people really like his work, while others (looks at Rusty Burke) consider him to be a hack. I’ve not read enough of his work to have an opinion (yet).

The stories about his occult detective, Jules de Grandin, were recently published in an affordable five volume edition. Quinn wrote more than just de Grandin stories, though. I’m going to try to read some of them this year as well as start working my way through the de Grandin stories.

Blogging Brackett: “The Beast-Jewel of Mars”

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Today, December 7, is the birthday of Leigh Brackett (1915-1978). That’s big deal here.

For today’s birthday post, I’m going to look at “The Beast-Jewel of Mars”. It was first published in the Winter 1948 issue of Planet Stories. It is currently available in the ebook Martian Quest (not to be confused with the omnibus of the same name from Haffner Press. That one is out of print. Amazon lists one copy of the Haffner volume for $256.)

Burk Winters is a spaceship captain who has resigned. His fiance, Jill Leland, took a flier out into the desert. Her flier was found crashed, but her body is missing. He’s going to look for her. Burk has an unusual plan to do that.

There’s a Martian practice known as Shanga, the going-back. In it a person regresses to a more primitive state. It’s like a legalized drug. There are Shanga parlors, sort of like opium dens, but the experience is weak. Burk wants the full experience, which is technically illegal. Jill was a Shanga addict, and Burk is hoping to find her.

Here’s how Brackett describes what Burk sees when he goes to a Shanga parlor.

Their faces (the Earthmen’s) were pallid and effeminate, scored with the haggard marks of life lived under the driving tension of a super-modren age.

A Martian woman sat in an alcove, behind a glassite desk. She was dark, sophisticatedly lovely. Her costume was the aftfully adapted short rove of ancient Mars, and she wore no ornament. Her slanting topaz eyes regarded Burk Winters with professional plesantness, but deep in them he could see the scorn and the pride of a race so old that the Terran exquisites of the Trade Cities were only crude children beside it.

Burk goes to an ancient city on a canal, a city that was once a port on an ancient sea, now long dry. There he undergoes Shanga, and he finds a lot more than he bargains for.

Leigh Brackett

One of the pleasures of reading Brackett is that, like REH, she could describe action with poetry. She can set a mood with a few lines of description like few writers can. There is a strong undercurrent of anti-colonialism in this story. That’s something of a trend today in what’s being currently written. Brackett shows the effects of colonialism in this story, and she didn’t need a doorstop of a book to do it. And she does it without neglecting character or action.

Burk is like many of Brackett’s characters. He’s a hard, bitter man who is looking for a lost love. This is a theme that crops up often in Brackett’s work, and in her hands, it’s always fresh.

I found “The Beast-Jewel of Mars” to be an excellent story. I’m not going to give the ending away. I’ll let you read it for yourself. There’s something about Brackett’s work that speaks to me deep in my soul. Yeah, I know, that sounds pretty deep. But her work scratches an itch that few other writers can. You should check her out if you haven’t yet.