There really isn’t any way to predict if an author will one day become important to you. A perfect example of this is Edmond Hamilton. When I was kid in the 1970s, collecting paperbacks at an alarming rate, I had piles of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E Howard books. Lin Carter as well. Now I think back to how much of that was because I was a super fan of these writers and how much was because that’s what was being printed at the time. It’s a combination, no doubt. I had no source of steady income, so I spent my quarters and dollars frugally. This might have been a third factor.
The only paperback I had by Edmond Hamilton was a copy of Lancer’s The Valley of Creation (1967). This was the red reprint version with a swordswoman riding a black horse alongside her pet hawk and tiger. In the background, armed space marines watch her ride by. (I’m pretty sure the cover art was by Gray Morrow.) The blurb says, “In the Tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs.” Another edition uses the words: “Sword and Sorcery.” Those Lancer people really wanted me to buy this book. Because usually that’s all it would have taken. I did buy it or acquired it second-hand. I never read it back then.
Read the rest:
https://www.michaelmay.online/2017/09/guest-post-comet-doom-sfs-second-chance.html
