If you missed the last one…
Startling Stories and A. Merritt had a similar relationship as did the Ray A. Palmer Pulps. Since Startling published short novels, there was a good chance some would be inspired by Merritt. Thrilling Wonder Stories was its sister magazine and used shorter pieces. The authors who wrote for Mort Weisinger, Oscar J. Friend and Sam Merwin Jr. sound pretty familiar: Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Murray Leinster and Leigh Brackett.
Once again we see the elements of H. Rider Haggard made bigger and more spectacular through the lens of Abraham Merritt. We get fantastic female characters with power, either the political kind, being queens and princesses, or the magical kind ala She. We get the remote but dangerous location filled with mystery and terror. These are usually set at the Poles, North or South, in jungles or remote plateaus in South America (ala A. Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.)
“A Yank in Valhalla” by Edmond Hamilton (Startling Stories, January 1941)
“Strangers on the Heights” by Manly Wade Wellman (Startling Stories, Summer 1944)
“The Valley of the Flame” by Henry Kuttner (Startling Stories, March 1946) Written as Keith Hammond so C. L. Moore may have contributed some to this novel and the next.
“The Dark World” by Henry Kuttner (Startling Stories, Summer 1946)
“The Sleeper is a Rebel” by Bryce Walton (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1948)
“The Valley of Creation” by Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett (Startling Stories, July 1948)
“The Portal in the Picture” by Henry Kuttner (Startling Stories, September 1949)
“The Lake of the Gone Forever” by Leigh Brackett (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949)
“The Other World” by Murray Leinster (Startling Stories, November 1949)
“The Citadel of Lost Ages” by Leigh Brackett (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1950)
Conclusion
Most of these short novels from Startling Stories and inspired by A. Merritt would resurface in the 1960s in paperback form. They were the perfect size for an ACE Double. The Valley of Creation got a blurb saying “In the Tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs” of all things. I bought this book second hand and never finished it. ERB it is not. It should have read “In the Tradition of A. Merritt” to be truer.It would be a while later before I could appreciate that.
Those 1960-70s paperbacks loved slapping a reference to the big guys: Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. on there to get you to buy. (One book, Kavin’s World by David Mason, claimed to be “A hero greater than Conan!” and “A World in the Tradition of Tolkien!” It reads like neither. The Frazetta art was nice at least.)
The paperbacks did give writers like Henry Kuttner a ready supply of work for reprinting. He and Ed Hamilton had a bit of a renaissance in the 1960s thanks to these old novels.
