For the rest of Autograph Hound Saturday let’s return to the thrilling days of the early twentieth century pulp scene, and hand the action over to Kevin Cook.
Kevin’s got something sneaky going, pulling out John Hancocks from writers who went by three full names.
(I suspect a conspiracy is afoot on the three name names front, since Brian Leno just told me, “Got Edward Lucas White and Edwin Lester Arnold in the mail yesterday, so I’m as happy as a guy going on a date with Bettie Page.”)
Kevin reports on his first offering: “Homer Eon Flint today is probably best known as the co-author with Austin Hall of The Blind Spot, a classic early parallel world novel.
“But he deserves greater acclaim as one of the first American authors to write interplanetary fiction in the space opera vein — keeping in mind that he was writing a full decade ahead of E. E. Smith, Edmond Hamilton and John W. Campbell.
“His ‘The Lord of Death’ has an ending that today we would condemn as one of the worst cliches in all science fiction, as two people named Edam and Ave flee a planet in a spacecraft obviously headed toward earth.
“Hold on a second, though. Sure, in 2019 we would laugh at such a story, but ‘The Lord of Death’ was first printed in May 1919.
“Perhaps he introduced that theme to science fiction? You cannot label something a cliche if you are the first person to write it.
“Flint’s career was cut short by his somewhat mysterious and unexplained death in 1924. His signature is also rare because no books of his were published in his lifetime.”
The story “The Man in the Moon” hit print in All-Story Weekly for October 4, 1919.
