Black Gate

All right. Listen up, all you young fantasy punks. I know you’re out there, devouring contemporary fantasy by the truckload, while I’m trying to school you on the forgotten classics of the past. I know you’re not listening, because I rarely paid attention to the crotchety old-timers who tried to get me to read forgotten fantasy classics 30 years ago. I was too busy with Lord of Light, Bridge of Birds, Watership Down, and Swords Against Death.

Eventually, of course, I learned the error of my ways. I began to listen to my elders, and appreciate the glory of the pulp era of fantasy. I read the books they passed to me, and gradually became wiser, more worldly, healthier, and better looking, with fuller and more lustrous hair and better posture.

Mostly. I didn’t read, like, everything they foisted on me. Because Star Trek was on in the afternoon, and Dr. Who in the evenings (the Tom Baker episodes, naturally), and a lad needs some down time.

Now, these Vintage Treasures articles are my vehicle to pass along the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of a fabulously well-read generation (i.e. old people) to the eager and outstretched hands of the readers of tomorrow (you lot). That’s admittedly harder to do with the great classics of fantasy I haven’t read yet. Theoretically though, it might be possible to duck some of my personal responsibility by passing them along instead.

In short, skipping a generation and cutting out the middleman. Now pay attention, because this is where you come in.

I am tasking you with a sacred undertaking, upon which the very future of our beloved genre rests: to read, appreciate  and evangelize the great works of 20th Century pulp fantasy. The ones I never got around to, anyway. So I can get back to that Season Two Star Trek DVD which arrived last week. Appreciate it.

Let’s start with The Blind Spot, by Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint. What’s it about? I have no idea. If you were paying attention, you’d have clued in to that. But right there on the cover Ace Books calls it “The most famous fantastic novel of all time,” and the esteemed Forrest J. Ackerman shouts out the word “Fabulous!” That should be good enough for you.

The Blind Spot was published in 1921 as a serial in Argosy-All Story Weekly, and reprinted by Ace Books in 1964, with a doubtlessly fascinating and informative introduction by Ackerman that would have made writing this post a lot easier if I’d known about it 15 minutes ago. It is 318 pages in paperback for 50 cents. Finding a copy is left as an exercise to the reader (I got my copy on eBay for under a buck.) And get a move on, the cultural heritage of fantasy is at stake. But no pressure.

I have vivid memories of watching George Pal’s science fiction thriller The Time Machine — based on the classic novel by H.G. Wells — in a theater, even though it came out in 1960, four years before I was born. Likely I saw it in an auditorium during a Cub Scouts movie night, or something. In any event, I remember the Morlocks. Scary, scary dudes.

In the last ten years there’s been an explosion of sequels to classic fiction. You don’t have to look far to find examples; not with Oz the Great and Powerful playing in theaters, and shelves and shelves of Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austin sequels crowding bookstores.

Typically, however, K.W. Jeter — the man who created the word “Steampunk” — was there first, with the novel Morlock Night in 1979. Morlock Night explores what might have happened if the Time Traveler’s wonderful machine fell into the hands of the Morlocks and they used it to return to Victorian England and turn London into their new hunting ground.

Morlock Night is full of surprises, as the premise becomes the launching point for a fast-paced fantasy involving King Arthur and Merlin, Excalibur, an ancient Atlantean submarine, and the fabric of the Cosmos being torn to the ripping point by the paradoxes of time travel… standard steampunk fare by today’s standards, but that was pretty wild stuff in 1979.

In his now-famous letter to Locus in April 1987, Jeter was the first to use the word “steampunk” to describe this book, and the strange and exciting new sub-genre of retro-adventure fantasy also being written by Tim Powers and James Blaylock:

Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term… like “steampunks,” perhaps…

Morlock Knight was out of print for over three decades, until Angry Robot reprinted it in a handsome new edition in April, 2011. It was originally published in paperback by DAW in June 1979, with a vivid (and very yellow) cover by Josh Kirby, who later became renowned for his Discworld covers (click the image for a bigger version). It is 156 pages, originally priced at $1.75; the new edition is $7.99 ($6.99 for the digital version).