Blog Archives
sRETROSPECTIVE: “The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt
Thursday , 25, February 2016 Appendix N, Before the Big Three Leave a commentAfter reading “Through the Dragon Glass”, this one is a real disappointment. A. Merritt’s lush prose is completely appropriate in describing mysterious otherworldly women and strange, nightmarish landscapes. But the former is completely absent here while the latter is only given a brief treatment here. It’s compelling, though… and it’s stunning to realize that people […]
RETROSPECTIVE: “Through the Dragon Glass” by A. Merritt
Monday , 22, February 2016 Appendix N, Before the Big Three 2 CommentsWhen I read The Moon Pool, Creep, Shadow, Creep!, and Dwellers in the Mirage last year, I noted such a difference between his first novel and his later ones that I mistakenly assumed that A. Merritt’s writing must have improved drastically over the course of the 1920’s. I could not have been more wrong. Everything […]
RETROSPECTIVE: Behind the Curtain by Francis Stevens
Thursday , 11, February 2016 Before the Big Three 4 CommentsThis story had the potential to be a masterpiece. The pacing, the cascade of hints that gradually snap into focus, and most of all, a character that really does come across as the “very apotheosis of hatred”– wow! As I was reading it I wanted to compare it to Edgar Allan Poe, even. Then I got […]
RETROSPECTIVE: Part Two of “The Citadel of Fear” by Francis Stevens
Monday , 8, February 2016 Before the Big Three 2 CommentsFor all the flack H. P. Lovecraft gets for being a terrible wordsmith, the guy was not dumb. He knew exactly what makes for a good story. He not explained how to do it in a 1920 article for the United Amateur Press Association, but he also put his ideas into practice so well, he […]
RETROSPECTIVE: “Friend Island” by Francis Stevens
Thursday , 4, February 2016 Before the Big Three 3 CommentsIn this short story published in All-Story Weekly in 1918, Gertrude Barrows Bennett depicts an imaginary future where women have become the “world’s ruling sex”. If the story hadn’t spoken of an “elder time when woman’s superiority to man had not been so long recognized”, I would have been inclined to say that this was […]
RETROSPECTIVE: Part One of “The Citadel of Fear” by Francis Stevens
Monday , 1, February 2016 Before the Big Three 6 CommentsThis is a truly weird piece of fiction. It pretty well has everything: pulpy adventurers, remote and exotic locations, a mythical city that is a plausible real world Elfland, monsters, terrors, encounters with gods, and– finally!– a mysterious moth-girl worthy of a particularly lurid pulp cover. This is light years ahead of Francis Steven’s first […]