DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Fan, whole no. 4, September 1945

Transcribe
Translate

Fan, whole no. 4, September 1945

Page 11

ans, or of W. Somerset Maugham's early masterpiece, The Magician. From France, J. Barbey D'Aurevilly has given us a gloomy, moor-bound masterpiece, Bewitched, and out of Germany comes the Poesque Hanns Heinz Ewers' tortured Alraune, of the mandrake-girl whose influence poisons her lovers. Other notable novels are: Michel Arlen's irreverent and shocking Hell! Said the Duchess; Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris, the best version of conventional lycanthropy thus far, though slightly rivalled by Franklin Gregory's The White Wolf; John Buchan's historical novel of Satanism in Scotland, Witch Wood; Francis Brett Young's Cold Harbour with its malignant genius and poltergeist phenomena; Walter de la Mare's The Return, dealing with personality-transference from the grave; Esther Forbes' highly praised novel of Colonial witchcraft, A Mirror for Witches; Dorothy Macardle's suspenseful ghost story, The Uninvited; Alexander Laing's and Thomas Painter's grisly medical horrors, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck and The Motives of Nicholas-Holtz; Clemence Dane's historically divided story of a family involved in unholy doings, The Babyons; Oliver Onion's The Hand of Kornelius Voyt and Dennis Parry's The Survivor, both describing usurpations of personality; Jessie Douglas Kerruish's splendidly weird The Undying Monster, packed with hereditary evil and terror; Leonard Cline's excellent story of drugs stimulating hereditary memory to a hideous degree, The Dark Chamber; and two short literary classics, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. A good buy is the recent volume, Six Novels of the Supernatural, edited by Edward Wagenknecht, though only three are at all weird: and it would be well to be on the lookout for the forthcoming Arkham House omnibus of William Hope Hodgson's rare and splendid novels of fantastic horror.

The field of "pure fantasy" is a dumping ground for all fantastic fiction that is neither weird nor science-fictional, and is generally thought to comprise material whose fantastic concepts are bounded by neither "scientific" nor traditionally supernatural laws or patterns but only by the free-ranging fancy of the author (though themes from non-weird aspects of mythology are commonly included as well). The literature of the field is too large and disorganized to cover adequately in this brief space, so the mention of a few highlights will have to suffice. Three notable recent anthologies of pure fantasy are Philip van Doren Stern's The Moonlight Traveler, Whit Burnett's Two Bottles of Relish, and Marjorie Fischer's and Rolfe Humphries' Pause, to Wonder. Lord Dunsany is one of the greatest modern artists in the field, writing of weird, imaginary realms and adventures in The Gods of Pegana, Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, A Dreamer's Tales, A Book of Wonder, Tales of Wonder, Fifty-One Tales, Tales of Three Hemispheres, The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens, Jorkens Remembers Africa, Don Rodriguez, The Charwoman's Shadow, The Blessing of Pan, etc. In this country James Branch Cabell has won immortality with his monumental Biography of the Life of Manuel, fifteen polished, gently ironic novels of an imaginary medieval land, Poictesme, among the best of them being Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Domnei, Chivalry, Jurgen, and The High Place; also there is his trilogy of Smirt, Smith, and Smire. Somewhat like him is the gifted Englishman, E. R. Eddison, a wonderful stylist whose matchless novels, The Worm Ouroboros, Mistress of Mistresses, and A Fish Dinner in Memison have yet to receive the recognition due them. Walter de la Mare is more at home in pure fantasy than weird fiction and, besides the books listed earlier, has Broomsticks, Henry Brocken, and Memoirs of a Midget to his credit. George MacDonald's Lilith, Phantastes, and The Flight of the Shadow, are mystical, idealistic fairy-tales for adults. Other good books of pure fantasy are David Garnett's Lady into Fox and The Man in the Zoo, John Collier's Presenting Moonshine, The Touch of Nutmeg, His Monkey Wife, and Defy the Foul Fiend; Arthur MacArthur's After the Afternoon, H. F. Heard's The Great Fog, and Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads.

Saving...

ans, or of W. Somerset Maugham's early masterpiece, The Magician. From France, J. Barbey D'Aurevilly has given us a gloomy, moor-bound masterpiece, Bewitched, and out of Germany comes the Poesque Hanns Heinz Ewers' tortured Alraune, of the mandrake-girl whose influence poisons her lovers. Other notable novels are: Michel Arlen's irreverent and shocking Hell! Said the Duchess; Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris, the best version of conventional lycanthropy thus far, though slightly rivalled by Franklin Gregory's The White Wolf; John Buchan's historical novel of Satanism in Scotland, Witch Wood; Francis Brett Young's Cold Harbour with its malignant genius and poltergeist phenomena; Walter de la Mare's The Return, dealing with personality-transference from the grave; Esther Forbes' highly praised novel of Colonial witchcraft, A Mirror for Witches; Dorothy Macardle's suspenseful ghost story, The Uninvited; Alexander Laing's and Thomas Painter's grisly medical horrors, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck and The Motives of Nicholas-Holtz; Clemence Dane's historically divided story of a family involved in unholy doings, The Babyons; Oliver Onion's The Hand of Kornelius Voyt and Dennis Parry's The Survivor, both describing usurpations of personality; Jessie Douglas Kerruish's splendidly weird The Undying Monster, packed with hereditary evil and terror; Leonard Cline's excellent story of drugs stimulating hereditary memory to a hideous degree, The Dark Chamber; and two short literary classics, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. A good buy is the recent volume, Six Novels of the Supernatural, edited by Edward Wagenknecht, though only three are at all weird: and it would be well to be on the lookout for the forthcoming Arkham House omnibus of William Hope Hodgson's rare and splendid novels of fantastic horror. The field of "pure fantasy" is a dumping ground for all fantastic fiction that is neither weird nor science-fictional, and is generally thought to comprise material whose fantastic concepts are bounded by neither "scientific" nor traditionally supernatural laws or patterns but only by the free-ranging fancy of the author (though themes from non-weird aspects of mythology are commonly included as well). The literature of the field is too large and disorganized to cover adequately in this brief space, so the mention of a few highlights will have to suffice. Three notable recent anthologies of pure fantasy are Philip van Doren Stern's The Moonlight Traveler, Whit Burnett's Two Bottles of Relish, and Marjorie Fischer's and Rolfe Humphries' Pause, to Wonder. Lord Dunsany is one of the greatest modern artists in the field, writing of weird, imaginary realms and adventures in The Gods of Pegana, Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, A Dreamer's Tales, A Book of Wonder, Tales of Wonder, Fifty-One Tales, Tales of Three Hemispheres, The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens, Jorkens Remembers Africa, Don Rodriguez, The Charwoman's Shadow, The Blessing of Pan, etc. In this country James Branch Cabell has won immortality with his monumental Biography of the Life of Manuel, fifteen polished, gently ironic novels of an imaginary medieval land, Poictesme, among the best of them being Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Domnei, Chivalry, Jurgen, and The High Place; also there is his trilogy of Smirt, Smith, and Smire. Somewhat like him is the gifted Englishman, E. R. Eddison, a wonderful stylist whose matchless novels, The Worm Ouroboros, Mistress of Mistresses, and A Fish Dinner in Memison have yet to receive the recognition due them. Walter de la Mare is more at home in pure fantasy than weird fiction and, besides the books listed earlier, has Broomsticks, Henry Brocken, and Memoirs of a Midget to his credit. George MacDonald's Lilith, Phantastes, and The Flight of the Shadow, are mystical, idealistic fairy-tales for adults. Other good books of pure fantasy are David Garnett's Lady into Fox and The Man in the Zoo, John Collier's Presenting Moonshine, The Touch of Nutmeg, His Monkey Wife, and Defy the Foul Fiend; Arthur MacArthur's After the Afternoon, H. F. Heard's The Great Fog, and Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads.