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Post by andydecker on Feb 4, 2020 19:16:45 GMT
Rohmer, like many people of the period, was anti-Semitic and seems to have had crudely racist ideas about people with dark skin, but actually revered modern Egyptians and Chinese, considering them the heirs to a vastly superior civilization. Probably the greatest detraction for today's readers, apart from the racism, is his tendency to use Dr. Fu Manchu (or Sumuru, or whoever the latest super-villain is) as a mouthpiece for his own ideas about modern Western society. I think the editions represented in Dem's amazing recent purchase may have been slightly "cleaned up" in terms of racist language and I was surprised to find some typos (possibly originating in scanning errors which failed to be corrected). Editors who are literate in English prose seem to have nearly gone the way of the dinosaur though I suppose there are still a few good ones left, here and there. Steve Those editors are nearly extinct. I fear you are right, Steve. I will never get this myopic retro-damnation of writers who were - how surprising - mirroring the accepted not to mention socially enforced views of their times. The pre-WWI generation views on life were so radically different on most which is accepted today, while the post WWII generation is just another different animal. This shouldn't be a hard to grasp idea. But it is. Maybe all pre-millenial fiction should by default judged as guilty of this or that "ism". It would spare us a lot of hand-wringing and hypocricy.
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Post by cromagnonman on Feb 4, 2020 19:30:17 GMT
I also thought to buy this edition. It looks nice. But I am not such a fan of the novels, and 13 books is a bit much. Well, maybe this is a bit nitpicking, but the era of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula is the 1890s and not the eve of WWI.
That's not nitpicking Andy. But my pointing out that "His Last Bow" takes place in 1914. Now that's nitpicking.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 4, 2020 19:50:07 GMT
I also thought to buy this edition. It looks nice. But I am not such a fan of the novels, and 13 books is a bit much. Well, maybe this is a bit nitpicking, but the era of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula is the 1890s and not the eve of WWI.
That's not nitpicking Andy. But my pointing out that "His Last Bow" takes place in 1914. Now that's nitpicking. Lol. You know, when I wrote this this was exactly the story I thought about as a pro-argument for the blurb. :-)
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Post by jamesdoig on Feb 9, 2020 3:20:48 GMT
The Lifeline Bookfair is on again, sadly not a lot of vintage horror paperbacks, but picked these up: For a buck: 2 bucks: A buck: Nice copy of this for a buck: Early Corgi pb of this for $2:
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 9, 2020 4:08:09 GMT
Congratulations; great cover on Nightmare Stories!
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 9, 2020 12:43:02 GMT
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Post by andydecker on Feb 10, 2020 12:03:42 GMT
Great haul, James. The Hoffman Price alone is quite expensive at online retailers.
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 10, 2020 18:10:32 GMT
Is there actually a giant mantis in The Hand of Fu Manchu?
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Post by jamesdoig on Feb 10, 2020 20:04:40 GMT
Congratulations; great cover on Nightmare Stories! That's Frank Benier - a great Aussie cover artist. Pity he didn't more horror titles.
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Post by jamesdoig on Feb 10, 2020 20:07:25 GMT
Great haul, James. The Hoffman Price alone is quite expensive at online retailers. The Gerald Suster book seems pretty scarce - I can't find it listed on the usual book seller sites. I started it the other day and it's pretty good.
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Post by helrunar on Feb 10, 2020 20:46:43 GMT
Kooshmeister, it's been over 40 years since I last read Hand of Fu-Manchu, but I definitely don't have even a faint memory of anything like a giant preying mantis or some other Toho-like monstrosity in the book. The British title, if I recall correctly, was The Si-Fan Mysteries--the Devil Doctor is offstage for much of the book (I think he is actually presumed dead during quite a bit of the action). The book is mostly remembered among enthusiasts for the first appearance of the insidious mastermind's devilish daughter, Fah Lo Suee... unnamed, but glimpsed by Petrie in a railway carriage. I think Rohmer reused the idea for the scene a couple of years later in his 1920 novel The Green Eyes of Bast (slow moving but has some good atmospheric bits--certainly not anywhere near the thrilling annals of Guy N. Smith or Mrs Pierce Nase).
James, I keep meaning to put Suster on my list of authors to explore, but it's possible that his books are priced beyond my purse. A few days ago I noticed that a story by Carter Dickson (aka John Dickson Carr) was included in one of Kev's Peter Haining books. That caught my eye because I've recently been watching some episodes of Boris Karloff's 1954 UK series Colonel March of Scotland Yard, which was inspired by Carter Dickson's short stories collected (in part) in the 1940 volume The Department of Queer Complaints. I did a check on a popular online book vending site and was startled to see that cheaper copies of this and various other Carter Dickson titles started in the $50 range. Egads! I had no idea this author was so collectible. I've always thought of him as dry and competent but nothing to write home about.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2020 20:53:10 GMT
Great haul, James. The Hoffman Price alone is quite expensive at online retailers. The Gerald Suster book seems pretty scarce - I can't find it listed on the usual book seller sites. I started it the other day and it's pretty good. It's terrific, my favourite of his occult novels. We got quite a lengthy thread from it, too: The Offering. I still love The Handyman best, though. That one is more your pervert's choice.
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 11, 2020 16:13:56 GMT
Kooshmeister, it's been over 40 years since I last read Hand of Fu-Manchu, but I definitely don't have even a faint memory of anything like a giant preying mantis or some other Toho-like monstrosity in the book. Well, nutmuffins. I want a giant killer mantis.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 12, 2020 18:17:11 GMT
I seem to remember that in the comics there were giant killer mantis sometimes.
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 12, 2020 21:45:22 GMT
I may get the book anyway.
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