Homer Eon Flint & Austin Hall - The Blind Spot.pdf - Homer Eon Flint & Austin Hall - widez2

The Blind Spot

Flint, Homer Eon

Published: 1921

Type(s): Novels, Science Fiction

Source: http://gutenberg.org

About Flint:

Homer Eon Flint (1888 as Homer Eon Flindt –1924) was a writer of

pulp science fiction novels and stories.

He began working as a scenarist for silent films (reportedly at his

wife's insistence) in 1912. In 1918 he published "The Planeteer" in All-St-

ory Weekly. His "Dr. Kinney" stories were reprinted by Ace Books in

1965, and with Austin Hall he co-wrote the novel The Blind Spot.

Reportedly he died as a result of an involvement in a bank robbery at-

tempt. According to his granddaughter the only witness, was himself a

gangster.

Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks for Flint:

• The Devolutionist (1921)

• The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life (1919)

• The Emancipatrix (1921)

About Hall:

Austin Hall (c. 1885 - 1933) was an American short story writer and

novelist. He began writing when, while working as a cowboy, he was

asked to write a story. He wrote westerns, science fiction and fantasy for

pulp magazines.

Source: Wikipedia

Life+70 .

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INTRODUCTION

THE LURE AND LORE OF "THE BLIND SPOT"

BY FORREST J ACKERMAN

The Blind Spot opens with the words: "Perhaps it were just as well to

start at the beginning. A mere matter of news." Suppose I use them in the

same sense:

A mere matter of news: The first instalment of this fabulous novel was

featured in Argosy-All-Story-Weekly for May 14, 1921. Described as a

"different" serial, it was introduced by a cover by Modest Stein. In the

foreground was the profile of a girl of another dimension—ethereal, sen-

suous, the eternal feminine—the Nervina of the story. Filmy crystalline

earrings swept back over her bare shoulders. Dominating the back-

ground was a huge flaming yellow ball, like our Sun as seen from the hy-

pothetical Vulcan— splotched with murky, mysterious globii vitonae.

There was an ancient quay, and emerging from the ultramarine waters

about it a silhouetted metropolis of spires, domes, and minarets. It was

1921, and that generation thus received its first glimpse of the alien land-

scape of The Blind Spot and the baroque beauty of an immortal woman

of fantasy fiction.

The authors? Homer Eon Flint was already a reigning favourite with

post-World-War-I enthusiasts of imaginative literature, who had eagerly

devoured his QUEEN OF LIFE and LORD OF DEATH, his KING OF

CONSERVE ISLAND and THE PLANETEER. Austin Hall was well

known and popular for his ALMOST IMMORTAL, REBEL SOUL, and

INTO THE INFINITE.

Then came this epoch-making collaboration. When Mary Gnaedinger

launched Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine she early presented THE

BLIND SPOT, and printed it again in that magazine's companion Fant-

astic Novels. These reprints are now collectors' items, almost unobtain-

able, and otherwise the story has long been out of print. Rumour says an

unauthorised German version of THE BLIND SPOT, has been published

in book form. There is another book called THE BLIND SPOT, and also a

magazine story, and a major movie studio was to produce a film of the

same title. However, here is presented the only hard-cover version of the

only BLIND SPOT of consequence to lovers of fantasy.

Who wrote the story? When I first looked into the question, as a 15

year old boy, Homer Eon Flint (he originally spelled his name with a "d")

was already dead of a fall into a canyon. In 1949 his widow told me: "I

think Homer's father contributed that middle name"—the same name

(with slightly different spelling) that the Irish poet George Russell took

as his pen-name, which became known by its abbreviation AE. Mrs.

Flindt said of Flint's father: "He was a very deep thinker, and enjoyed

reading heavy material." Like father, like son. "Homer always talked

over his ideas with me, and although I couldn't always follow his

thoughts it seemed to help him to express them to another—it made

some things come more clearly to him."

Flint was a great admirer of H. G. Wells (this little grandmother-

schoolteacher told me) and had probably read all his works up to the

time when he (Flint) died in 1924. He had read Doyle and Haggard, but:

"Wells was his favourite—the real thinker."

Flint found a fellow-thinker in Austin Hall, whom he met in San Jose,

California, while working at a shop where shoes were repaired electric-

ally—"a rather new concept at the time." Hall, learning that Flint lived in

the same city, sought him out, and they became fast friends. Each stimu-

lated the other. As Hall told me twenty years ago of the origin of THE

BLIND SPOT:

"One day after we had lunched together, I held my finger up in front

of one of my eyes and said: 'Homer, couldn't a story be written about

that blind spot in the eye?' Not much was said about it at the time, but

four days later, again at lunch, I outlined the whole story to him. I wrote

the first eighteen chapters; Homer took up the tale as 'Hobart Fenton'

and wrote the chapters about the house of miracles, the living death, the

rousing of Aradna's mind, and so forth, up to 'The Man from Space,'

where once again I took over."

To THE BLIND SPOT Hall contributed a great knowledge of history

and anthropology, while Flint's fortes were physics and medicine. Both

had a great fund of philosophy at their command.

When I met Hall (about four years older than Flint) he was in his

fifties: a devil-may-care old codger (old to a fifteen-year-old, that is) full

of good humour and indulgence for a youthful admirer who had jour-

neyed far to meet him. He casually referred to his 600 published stories,

and I carried away the impression of one who resembled both in output

and in looks that other fiction-factory of the time, Edgar Wallace.

Finally: Several years ago, before I knew anything about the present

volume, I had an unusual experience. (At that time I had no reason to

think THE BLIND SPOT would ever become available as a book, for the

location of the heirs proved a Herculean task by itself; publishers had

long wanted to present this amazing novel but could not do so until I

located Mrs. Mae Hall and Mrs. Mabel Flindt.) While, unfortunately, I

did not take careful notes at the time, the gist of the occurrence was this:

I visited a friend whose hobby (besides reading fantasy) was the oc-

cult, who volunteered to entertain me with automatic writing and the

ouija-board. Now, I share Lovecraft's scepticism towards the supernatur-

al, regarding it as at best a means of amusement. When the question

arose of what spirits we should try to lure to our planchette, the names

of Lovecraft, Merritt, Hall, and Flint popped into my pixilated mind. So I

set my fingers on the wooden heart and, since my host was also a Flint

admirer, we asked about Flint's fatal accident. The ouija spelled out:

N-O A-C-C-I-D-E-N-T—R-O-B-B-E-R-Y

There followed something about being held up by a hitch-hiker. Then

Hall (or at least some energy-source other than my own conscious mind)

came through too, and when I asked if he had left any work behind he

replied:

Y-E-S—T-H-E L-A-S-T G-O-D-L-I-N-G

Later I asked his son about this (without revealing the title) and Javen

Hall told me of the story his father had been plotting when he died: THE

HIDDEN EMPIRE, or THE CHILD OF THE SOUTHWIND. Whatever

was pushing the planchette failed to inform me that when I found Austin

Hall's son and widow, they would put into my hands an unknown, un-

published fantasy novel by Hall: THE HOUSE OF DAWN! Some day it

may appear in print.

Meanwhile you are getting understandably impatient to explore that

unknown realm of the Blind Spot. Be on your way, and bon voyage!

FORREST J ACKERMAN, Beverley Hills, Calif.

Homer Eon Flint & Austin Hall - The Blind Spot.pdf

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