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Fantasite, v. 1, issue 6, November-December 1941
31858063099505_009
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FANTASIANA BY LOUIS C. SMITH Perhaps no other man in fantasy was so little known by the reading public at large, and so shrouded in mystery, as the late master, H. P. L. He has been called a recluse, a secluded student of ancient lore--and he was; he has been described as cadaverous appearing, sopulchral almost-and he was. But his interest was a healthy one. There was nothing morbid about H. P. L. His pursuits in the line of the supernatural were directed by a high type of intellect which quite naturally detected more of the interest and g;amour in things long dead and wrapt in iniquity and silence, than in the noise and flash and cacophony of our modern lives. As for his cadaverous appearance....I wonder how many know that from the beginning Lovecraft was in precarious health, ill a greater portion of the time, and never filled with the natural fire of life possessed by you and I. His was a life dominated by mind alone. His was a life to be envied. To him Whom I knew, I bow. ************* "A Crystal Age," by W.H. Hudson, should be on any Phantastophile's shelves. It tells of the return of mankind to the forest after the machine age has all but demolished civilization; and shows a world wherein scientific wonders are made to simple serve man, without man being in anyway the slave to science. *********** Westbrook Pegler, in his column, "Fair Enough," once ridiculed the super-ship-building competition as exemplified by the Normandie and Queen Mary, by devoting his space to a recountal of a trans-Atlantic trip on the "S. S. Sick Chicken", a super-steamer of 2035. The S. S. Sick Chicken was five hundred miles from stem to stern; left New York at 9 a. m. , crossed to France, and returned by 2 p. m. of the same day! Her bow was built in Boston and the stern off the cost of Maryland; her keel was curved to accomodate the curvature of the earth; had her own farms, etc., for growing food; workmen lived their lives out and died aboard her while she was being built. Her average rainfall was about 60 inches annually. She had several inland fresh-water lakes, on whose surface as excursion boats plied the tiny antique steamers of a century before, the Normandie and the Queen Mary... Some boate eh? ************** Almost every columnist, not excluding Mark Hellinger, Louis Sobol, and Walter Winchell, has at one time or another devoted a column or two to things of a humorous fantastic nature. And most of them have been very good, though perhaps never realizing they were writing science fiction. That, incidentally would be an accomplishment for a fan magazine; getting a humorous fantasy story written by some leading columnist...Ah me. Pipe dreams again! ************* You probably have read in your paper within the last year or two of Salvador de Maderiaga, Spanish omissary to the League of Nations. But did you know that de Maderiaga is also author of a Science fiction classic, "The Sacred Giraffe"? ************* It is strange how a book may change through the years, and successive editions. I imagine the respective shades of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson would quiver amighty if they saw the battles today waged over which one wrote what..... ************ All of which circuitously leads back again to H. G. Wells. In all his worrks [sic] I have seen-and I have seen them all- there have been amazing changes since the time of writing and form in which they now stand. "The Time Machine", has been revised at least three times. "When the Sleeper Awakes" first edition issued by Harpers in 1899, was so changed as to be most startingly different in the edit of Thomas Nelson & Sons.
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FANTASIANA BY LOUIS C. SMITH Perhaps no other man in fantasy was so little known by the reading public at large, and so shrouded in mystery, as the late master, H. P. L. He has been called a recluse, a secluded student of ancient lore--and he was; he has been described as cadaverous appearing, sopulchral almost-and he was. But his interest was a healthy one. There was nothing morbid about H. P. L. His pursuits in the line of the supernatural were directed by a high type of intellect which quite naturally detected more of the interest and g;amour in things long dead and wrapt in iniquity and silence, than in the noise and flash and cacophony of our modern lives. As for his cadaverous appearance....I wonder how many know that from the beginning Lovecraft was in precarious health, ill a greater portion of the time, and never filled with the natural fire of life possessed by you and I. His was a life dominated by mind alone. His was a life to be envied. To him Whom I knew, I bow. ************* "A Crystal Age," by W.H. Hudson, should be on any Phantastophile's shelves. It tells of the return of mankind to the forest after the machine age has all but demolished civilization; and shows a world wherein scientific wonders are made to simple serve man, without man being in anyway the slave to science. *********** Westbrook Pegler, in his column, "Fair Enough," once ridiculed the super-ship-building competition as exemplified by the Normandie and Queen Mary, by devoting his space to a recountal of a trans-Atlantic trip on the "S. S. Sick Chicken", a super-steamer of 2035. The S. S. Sick Chicken was five hundred miles from stem to stern; left New York at 9 a. m. , crossed to France, and returned by 2 p. m. of the same day! Her bow was built in Boston and the stern off the cost of Maryland; her keel was curved to accomodate the curvature of the earth; had her own farms, etc., for growing food; workmen lived their lives out and died aboard her while she was being built. Her average rainfall was about 60 inches annually. She had several inland fresh-water lakes, on whose surface as excursion boats plied the tiny antique steamers of a century before, the Normandie and the Queen Mary... Some boate eh? ************** Almost every columnist, not excluding Mark Hellinger, Louis Sobol, and Walter Winchell, has at one time or another devoted a column or two to things of a humorous fantastic nature. And most of them have been very good, though perhaps never realizing they were writing science fiction. That, incidentally would be an accomplishment for a fan magazine; getting a humorous fantasy story written by some leading columnist...Ah me. Pipe dreams again! ************* You probably have read in your paper within the last year or two of Salvador de Maderiaga, Spanish omissary to the League of Nations. But did you know that de Maderiaga is also author of a Science fiction classic, "The Sacred Giraffe"? ************* It is strange how a book may change through the years, and successive editions. I imagine the respective shades of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson would quiver amighty if they saw the battles today waged over which one wrote what..... ************ All of which circuitously leads back again to H. G. Wells. In all his worrks [sic] I have seen-and I have seen them all- there have been amazing changes since the time of writing and form in which they now stand. "The Time Machine", has been revised at least three times. "When the Sleeper Awakes" first edition issued by Harpers in 1899, was so changed as to be most startingly different in the edit of Thomas Nelson & Sons.
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