Francis Stevens - Sunfire!

[dem bones]

Francis Stevens - Sunfire! Collected pulp magazine tales from the original mistress of fantasy (Chirag Patel/ Lamplight, 2020)

J. R. Korpa

The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar
Friend Island
Behind the Curtain
Unseen—Unfeared
The Elf-Trap
Sunfire

Blurb:
Gertrude Bennett has been called the "most important woman writer of fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1759-1797) and C.L. Moore (1911-1987)". This is a complete collection of short stories by the woman who first explored the dark fantasy worlds of the modern era. This book contains tales that were originally published in Weird Tales, Argosy, and All-Story Weekly between 1918-1923.

Illustrated with images by Virgil Finlay, the artist who illustrated many of Bennett/Stevens' original tales in the strange tales magazines in which they were published.

Also included is the first known sci fi story published by a woman writer in America, "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar"," which was the very first story sold by Bennett, under the pen-name of GM Barrows. This story predates her otherwise 6-year long writing career by 14 years, when she was just 21.

Cover; R. M. Mally: Interior illo: artist uncredited, though Heitman seems the most likely suspect.

Sunfire: (Weird Tales, July-August, Sept. 1923). Harrowing and weird events startle the five adventurers who land upon a far-off island.


Bruce Otway, explorer and naturalist, heads a five-man expedition to Tata Quarahy, an uncharted South American rock island with an ancient pyramid at its centre. No sooner have they landed than — a shock discovery! A fleet of derelict ships rot in the lake, and abandoned alongside them, a state of the art hydro-plane. The five men - Otway, Waring the war correspondent, Sigsbee the yacht owner, Johnny Bliekensderfer, the steward, and 'New York's finest,' Theron Narcisse Tellifer, who lives up to his initials in tight situations - search the pyramid for a trace of the missing airmen.
"On closer view, the flame-colored wall proved to be a mass of bas-relief carved work. In execution, it bore that same resemblance to Egyptian art which marks much work of the ancient South and Central American civilizations. The human figures were both male and female, the men nude, bearing platters of fruit and wine-jars, the women clad in single garments hanging from the shoulders. The men marched, but the women were presented in attitudes of ceremonial dance; also as musicians, playing upon instruments resembling Pan’s pipes of several reeds."

Right on cue, a haunting melody lures the adventurers to an upper chamber enclosing an artificial jungle, where the mystery flautist, a white girl in jaguar-skin one piece, entertains Chilopoda Scolopendra Horribilis — a giant yellow centipede, fast as a hunting spider and a hundred times as deadly! Two of the party open fire at point-blank range, but their bullets fail to penetrate the creature's scaly hide. At least the girl seems friendly, even prepares them a fruity feast — but who is she?

TBC

[cauldronbrewer]

Dec 11, 2022 17:57:12 GMT dem bones said:

Francis Stevens - Sunfire! Collected pulp magazine tales from the original mistress of fantasy (Chirag Patel/ Lamplight, 2020)

...

The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar
Friend Island
Behind the Curtain
Unseen—Unfeared
The Elf-Trap
Sunfire

Blurb:
Gertrude Bennett has been called the "most important woman writer of fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1759-1797) and C.L. Moore (1911-1987)". This is a complete collection of short stories by the woman who first explored the dark fantasy worlds of the modern era. This book contains tales that were originally published in Weird Tales, Argosy, and All-Story Weekly between 1918-1923.

Illustrated with images by Virgil Finlay, the artist who illustrated many of Bennett/Stevens' original tales in the strange tales magazines in which they were published.

Also included is the first known sci fi story published by a woman writer in America, "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar"," which was the very first story sold by Bennett, under the pen-name of GM Barrows. This story predates her otherwise 6-year long writing career by 14 years, when she was just 21.

...

Sunfire: (Weird Tales, July-August, Sept. 1923). Harrowing and weird events startle the five adventurers who land upon a far-off island.

Interesting--I haven't seen this book, but I do own a copy of another collection of her stories: The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy, edited by Gary Hoppenstand (Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2004). The contents overlap a fair amount:


The Nightmare
The Labyrinth
Friend Island
Behind the Curtain
Unseen--Unfeared
The Elf Trap
Serapion
Sunfire

Every time I see the cover, I'm reminded of Mira Sorvino. The book's interior looks great and includes some nice illustrations by Thomas L. Floyd.

But my favorite work by Stevens/Bennett is her short novel Claimed.

[dem bones]

R. W. Boeche

Cover borrowed from Am*z*n.uk

Dec 13, 2022 0:17:34 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

...

Interesting--I haven't seen this book, but I do own a copy of another collection of her stories: The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy, edited by Gary Hoppenstand (Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2004). The contents overlap a fair amount:


The Nightmare
The Labyrinth
Friend Island
Behind the Curtain
Unseen--Unfeared
The Elf Trap
Serapion
Sunfire

Every time I see the cover, I'm reminded of Mira Sorvino. The book's interior looks great and includes some nice illustrations by Thomas L. Floyd.

But my favorite work by Stevens/Bennett is her short novel Claimed.

The Gary Hoppenstand looks the one to have. Does "A man goes quietly to bed aboard the doomed Lusitania and awakens on a magical South Pacific island just as the passenger island is torpedoed" refer to Nightmare? The Patel/ Lamplight Sunfire! is a mish-mash in that the title novella is accompanied by several Virgil Finlay illustrations familiar from other, perhaps more deserving stories.

Sunfire: (cont.). TNT is first to realise that Anyi, the glowing spirit said to haunt the island, is in reality a massive diamond perched atop eight thick columns, at the base of each a man-trap! When he and Sigsbee trigger a spring, they're hurled into a pit of greasy black soot. It's almost as though several men have been roasted down there ...

Sigsbee is smitten, won't hear a bad word about their comely hostess, even when she drugs them unconscious, exchanges their clothing for "caveman" costumes, and leaves each man manacled to a wall in his own individual cell. Which of them is to be sacrificed to the hundred-legged monster? Which burnt to a cinder under the direct ray of the jewel? Who is the hideous night-hag leers at Waring as he struggles against the golden chains? And is it worth sticking with for sixteen chapters to find out?

Yes and no, really. There's a decent lost race fantasy story in here somewhere, but the second instalment (chapters 9-16) reads like the speed pulp it probably is. The pay-off — after an anticlimactic man versus giant arthropod showdown — which purports to explain the mystery erratic girl's behaviour, is preposterous!

[dem bones]

"Don't remind me that such a brown, shrivelled mummy-horror was ever a woman!"

Virgil Finlay, Behind the Curtain, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Jan. 1940)

Francis Stevens - Behind the Curtain: (All-Story Weekly, Sept. 21, 1918: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Jan. 1940). A story of exquisitely cruel revenge. The antiquarian's greatest treasures were an ancient carved Egyptian coffin, and a lovely faithless wife —

On discovering his trophy wife's affair with a mutual friend, Santallos the Egyptologist invites young Ralph Quentin over in Beatrice's sudden absence to share a bottle of Amontillado. Santallos confides in his guest. He has been a negligent husband, lavishing his attention on worthless artefacts. So, to make amends, he's sold all but one of his treasures, the exception being the sarcophagus of Ta-Nezem the Osirian, "the songstress of the house." The mummy, cause of much distress to Beatrice, has finally been cremated. Quentin is suitably taken aback at this development, and there's a further shock in store when the host insists he step behind the curtain leading to Beatrice's bedroom ....

[helrunar]

Sounds like a tale of exquisite sentimentality, perfect for the Yule season.

Who wouldn't want a shriveled mummy-horror to adorn that special curtained alcove in their back parlor? The ideal alternative for those strings of lights and ornaments you have no idea what to do with this year.

cheer, Hel.

[cauldronbrewer]

Dec 13, 2022 11:08:43 GMT dem bones said:

The Gary Hoppenstand looks the one to have.

I suspect that's the case. It also includes an informative introduction by the editor.

Dec 13, 2022 11:08:43 GMT dem bones said:

Does "A man goes quietly to bed aboard the doomed Lusitania and awakens on a magical South Pacific island just as the passenger island is torpedoed" refer to Nightmare?

Right you are.

[dem bones]

Thanks for the confirmation, Mr. B.

Unseen – Unfeared: (People’s Favorite Magazine, 10 Feb. 1919). If the evil thoughts of men took visible shape, what would happen to our nerves? A startling story, and a real novelty.

"But the room—the whole room was alive with other creatures than that. Everywhere I looked they were — centipedish things, with yard-long bodies, detestable, furry spiders that lurked in shadows, and sausage-shaped translucent horrors that moved—and floated through the air. They dived—here and there between me and the light, and I could see its bright greenness through their greenish bodies."

Worse, though; far worse than these were the things with human faces."

Blaisdell drags on a special cigar, inadvertently slipping him by dining partner, detective Mark Jenkins. The smoke is evidence in a murder inquiry wrongly implicating their mutual acquaintance, Dr. Holt. The restaurant is sited in a poor immigrant community and heading home Blaisdell is conscious of menace on all sides, every face glaring with murderous hatred (author evidently not keen on Italians). Outside a hall, a placard proclaims "SEE THE GREAT UNSEEN! Come in! This Means You! FREE TO ALL!" He steps inside to be greeted by a sinister, aged showman, who congratulates him on being the first to dare enter the premises. The old man subjects Blaisdell to an exhibition of his intricate photographs of terrible microorganisms, obscene manifestations of our vilest prejudices and vices, reducing him to terrified insanity. As with Behind the Curtain, Stevens can't bring it upon herself to abandon the protagonist to his fate, and Jenkins arrives in time to rescue his friend and rationalise the horrible affair, although news of a suicide adds further complication.

[cauldronbrewer]

Dec 14, 2022 7:30:19 GMT dem bones said:

Unseen – Unfeared: (People’s Favorite Magazine, 10 Feb. 1919). If the evil thoughts of men took visible shape, what would happen to our nerves? A startling story, and a real novelty.

"But the room—the whole room was alive with other creatures than that. Everywhere I looked they were — centipedish things, with yard-long bodies, detestable, furry spiders that lurked in shadows, and sausage-shaped translucent horrors that moved—and floated through the air. They dived—here and there between me and the light, and I could see its bright greenness through their greenish bodies."

Worse, though; far worse than these were the things with human faces."

Blaisdell drags on a special cigar, inadvertently slipping him by dining partner, detective Mark Jenkins. The smoke is evidence in a murder inquiry wrongly implicating their mutual acquaintance, Dr. Holt. The restaurant is sited in a poor immigrant community and heading home Blaisdell is conscious of menace on all sides, every face glaring with murderous hatred (author evidently not keen on Italians).

Though, to stick up for Stevens, Blainsdell's xenophobic observations turn out to be delusions induced by the poison in the cigar, so I'm not sure the author means to endorse them (if this were HPL, well, that would be a different story; interestingly, his "From Beyond" shares a central theme with "Unseen – Unfeared"). And then there's this:

Discovering his slight mistake, my detective friend spent the night searching for his unintended victim, myself; and that his search was successful was due to Pietro Marini, a young Italian of Jenkins' acquaintance, whom he met about the hour of 2:00 A.M. returning from a dance.

Now, Marini had seen me standing on the steps of the house where Doctor Frederick Holt had his laboratory and living rooms, and he had stared at me, not with any ill intent, but because he thought I was the sickest-looking, most ghastly specimen of humanity that he had ever beheld.

Having said that, the narrator does still call Mr. Marini "superstitious." As an aside, Jenkins is almost as bad a detective as Aylmer Vance: he gives Blainsdell a tainted cigar that's evidence in a murder investigation!

[dem bones]

Dec 15, 2022 1:54:48 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

Though, to stick up for Stevens, Blainsdell's xenophobic observations turn out to be delusions induced by the poison in the cigar, so I'm not sure the author means to endorse them (if this were HPL, well, that would be a different story; interestingly, his "From Beyond" shares a central theme with "Unseen – Unfeared")....

You're right. That's just me being sloppy. If anything that should be the protagonist is "evidently not keen on Italians" though, as you point out, it's the poisonous substance warping Blainsdell's brain. Lovecraft came to mind as I was reading it; not From Beyond (which I reread relatively recently and still can't recall) but The Horror At Red Hook, for obvious reasons.

Lawrence, Friend Island, Fantastic Novels Magazine, Sept. 1950.

Friend Island: (All-Story Weekly, 7 Sept, 1918 : Fantastic Novels Magazine, Sept. 1950). What kind of yarns will sea-women spin when women take to running ships of the line? Hearken to the tale of the Ancient Mariness, as astounding as any yet spun on the trackless sea!

Narrator recalls how, during the elder times "when women's supremacy to man's had but recently been recognised," she was shipwrecked on 'Anita,' a sentient, female desert island, with Nelson 'Nelly' Smith, a spineless inadequate of the weaker sex. Despite herself, the Ancient Mariness developed a certain fondness for this Man Friday, until, one day stubbing his toe on a rock, he did something so unladylike it outraged the spirit of the island. "He had taught me a lesson. A man is just full of mannishness, and the best of 'em ain't good enough for a lady to sacrifice her sensibilities to put up with." The old sea dawg concludes that guys are only good for nursing infants and footing the bill for a lady's macaroons and afternoon tea.

[helrunar]

I'm quite intrigued by "Friend Island." 1918 seems really early for a story of that type.

Stevens is yet another author I'd never heard of, so I'm reading these notes with increasing interest.

cheers, Hel

[dem bones]

The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar: (Argosy, March 1904: as by 'G. M. Barrows.') The man who was run down by an automobile, and the manner in which he afterward amazed those who picked him up. The accident victim is taken in and repaired by a benign MAD SCIENTIST, a yellow, wrinkled dwarf who goes only by the name 'Lawrence.' Back on his feet, Dunbar's curiosity gets the better of him, and he breaks his benefactor's one request — that he keep out of the laboratory. Consequently, Dunbar is at hand to save the life of a man hanging from a plank over a vat of sulphuric acid. To the astonishment of the workforce, he halts the man's descent by tearing apart the machine engine with his hands. Dunbar has been exposed to the fumes of Lawrence's life work, the miracle elixir, Stellarite, and is now a superman! The scientist bemoans the loss of his only sample of the wonder drug, dropped in an acid bath amid all the confusion.

[weirdmonger]

Dec 14, 2022 7:30:19 GMT dem bones said:

This is something special, something most dirtying of the spirit, suspenseful and self-suspended. Yet with blame and shame accruing the more I did read into it, as the narrator, within a sort of reconciling frame story of detection and drugs, is meant to expunge such feelings but did little to assuage me. A shabby area, full of the “ill-to-do” and late night shops, and dark turnings and, eventually, a sort of museum with a membrane that is a sort of prophecy of an inter-net dirtying us all, I guess. It is really evil, and one wonders who are the most evil — those trying to help the narrator as me, or the one (some sort of Mad Scientist with photographic plates?) who showed me that the Gestalt I have been seeking now for several years is indeed the “Thing” still emerging from man’s natural hatred and evil. Or is this a catharsis for betterment, a tunnel one needs to travel in order to expunge it? Or simply, as the story puts it, an obsession with non-existent evil? Whatever the case, this work is quite a discovery.

Just a few of the ingredients that still pepper my mind… after a reading that one must think hard about undertaking in the first place! —

“..I wished that he might never speak again. I was desperately, contemptibly in dread of the thing he might say next.”

“…a livid, ghastly chamber, filled with – overcrawled by – what?”

“– man has made these! By his evil thoughts, by his selfish panics, by his lusts and his interminable, never-ending hate he has made them, and they are everywhere!”

“Our gropings toward divinity were a sham, a writhing sunward of slime-covered beasts who claimed sunlight as their heritage, but in their hearts preferred the foul and easy depths.”

“I could abolish my monster-creating self.”

“…your colour photography and your pretty green golliwogs all nicely explained for you,..”

“– doubt is sometimes better than certainty,…”

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jan 20, 2023 15:46:32 GMT weirdmonger said:

Dec 14, 2022 7:30:19 GMT dem bones said:

This is something special, something most dirtying of the spirit, suspenseful and self-suspended. Yet with blame and shame accruing the more I did read into it, as the narrator, within a sort of reconciling frame story of detection and drugs, is meant to expunge such feelings but did little to assuage me. A shabby area, full of the “ill-to-do” and late night shops, and dark turnings and, eventually, a sort of museum with a membrane that is a sort of prophecy of an inter-net dirtying us all, I guess. It is really evil, and one wonders who are the most evil — those trying to help the narrator as me, or the one (some sort of Mad Scientist with photographic plates?) who showed me that the Gestalt I have been seeking now for several years is indeed the “Thing” still emerging from man’s natural hatred and evil. Or is this a catharsis for betterment, a tunnel one needs to travel in order to expunge it? Or simply, as the story puts it, an obsession with non-existent evil? Whatever the case, this work is quite a discovery.

Just a few of the ingredients that still pepper my mind… after a reading that one must think hard about undertaking in the first place! —

“..I wished that he might never speak again. I was desperately, contemptibly in dread of the thing he might say next.”

“…a livid, ghastly chamber, filled with – overcrawled by – what?”

“– man has made these! By his evil thoughts, by his selfish panics, by his lusts and his interminable, never-ending hate he has made them, and they are everywhere!”

“Our gropings toward divinity were a sham, a writhing sunward of slime-covered beasts who claimed sunlight as their heritage, but in their hearts preferred the foul and easy depths.”

“I could abolish my monster-creating self.”

“…your colour photography and your pretty green golliwogs all nicely explained for you,..”

“– doubt is sometimes better than certainty,…”

This story appears in the Library of America AMERICAN FANTASTIC TALES, so it must be important. I want to say it did little for me, yet I remembered it.