|
Post by helrunar on Oct 13, 2019 0:57:20 GMT
Thanks for pointing me to that old thread, Cauldron Brewer. I know I read the first Jandar of Callisto novel around age 15 and enjoyed it though I have no memory of what the book was about--some sort of Burroughs/Howard blur I would think.
I picked up an Atlantis novel Lin wrote but only read a few pages, a couple of years back. But I promptly turned to the back of the book and devoured in one sitting a short essay on the bibliography of Atlantean fantasy Lin composed as a kind of afterword.
As an editor and bibliographer, he had definite chops. And had heroic status to those of us struggling to find the kind of stuff (reading matter, that is) that made life worth living back circa 1969-1975. I don't think many fans under the age of (gulp) 50 realize just how incredible the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was back in the day.
cheers, Hel
|
|
|
Post by severance on Oct 13, 2019 15:43:15 GMT
I've never worked out how to quote on this website but on the last page Helrunar said that Fox hadn't written many novels according to his wikipedia page. His wikipedia page needs some work then, for he wrote dozens of them. See "Men of Violence" issue 11 for an article by Morgan Holmes on his many historical novels. He also did the odd crime novel for Gold Medal amongst others - here's one for example.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 26, 2019 3:14:55 GMT
This link was posted recently on a "Vintage Paperbacks" group I am a member of on social media. www.gardnerfrancisfoxlibrary.com/If you click on "Read Books Online," it shows several of his novels under various pen-names that have been scanned. On the first page of the novel Rebel Wench ("she fought for liberty like a woman--with her beauty, her brains--her body"), we read the following picturesque description of one of the characters: "He was a tall man, and lean. The breadth of his shoulders stretched the buckskin tight to the muscles that rippled as he lifted the hunting shirt and threw it from him." It's nice that the original Fawcett's edition was scanned as pictures of the actual pages rather than using character recognition software. Just more restful for the eyes. H.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on May 24, 2023 11:30:37 GMT
This short-lived imprint sold mostly Gothics as "Horror". It was all over the place, Clarissa Ross this month and a Sheridan Le Fanu collection the next. It just didn't made sense, even if some of the novels were of the "Black Magic" Gothics category. But 90% of the covers were pulled from random Gothics, bought from art agencies.
Still, this one must be a contender in the "Most unsuited Cover" category: Sadly most of the Gothics are far better written novels than this. It is just awful. Brian Creoghan gets whisked away by the druid stone and becomes Kalgorrn of Dis, warrior and swordsman, while his love Moira MacArt stays at home. Maybe Gardner Fox cobbled parts of unsold manuscripts together. How this wound up in this imprint is anyones guess. Maybe it was a leftover from the SF line, which had similar gems.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on May 24, 2023 19:56:47 GMT
Oh, that dire thing.
Given that the original edition (?) was the US Paperback Library, that Gothic-themed cover art might actually be at least a nod to the provenance of this excrescence.
Hel.
|
|