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Fan Slants, v. 1, issue 1, September 1943

Page 11

FAN SLATS......................................................................11

inhabits is the human mind; that the Hammands are cursed with hereditary canni-balistic lycanthropy manifesting itself only when the victim is in a frosty pine wood in starlight with one human companion; that the missing word is [underlined] garoul, which is the Old French for werewolf. Later she tells him that she first guessed the truth when she saw the doglike carving in the church, but was puzzled by the problem of the origin of the mania; the name of Magnus Fairlocks on the sword-hilt and Oliver's hereditary memory of inscriptions on the missing sword-blade pointed to the burial-mound of Thunder's Barrow, but the blade when found was unreadable; she experimentally produced the werewolf seizure in Oliver under hypnosis in the hidden room in Swanhild's presence but could get no information from him in that state; the next day she learned from Culpeper's manuscript of the stone slab in the barrow, which proved to be Magnus Fairlocks' gravestone, bearing the vital and long-sought information that he was descended from Sigmund the Volsung, whose story, as told in the Elder Edda and in William Morris' verse translation, revealed the origin of the monster-mania in the Hammands. Sigmund the Volsung in about 700 B. C. was persecuted to desperation by his enemies and was finally attacked savagely by a wolf, with the result that he vengefully and blasphemously vowed to fight as a wolf on the side of the Evil Powers against the Asa Gods in the day of Ragnarok; later he and one of his sons in ta starlight pinewood had a fit of wolf-mania (common at the time), which through suggestion and heredity was handed down the line of the heads of the family and believed to be an unshakable curse. Luna now makes her final effort to save Oliver and break the curse; putting him under hypnosis in the hidden room and making him think he is Sigmund the Volsung, she describes to him the Final Warring of the Norse gods, making him live through it as a wolf as he had vowed, and then tells him that the gods have arisen and forgiven him--with the result that when Oliver awakes, the monster-mania is permanently gone.

I leave it to you whether that story does not contain enough Gothic elements to satisfy any lover of the macabre. Lovecraft himself could hardly have thought up a plot more filled with the gloom of centuried traditions, dim probings into the unhallowed past, diabolic researches in black magic, and the nameless horror of a hovering doom from some alien space-time. And there is an epic sweep to the book, with its nearly three thousand years of unbroken family history and its powerful associations with the haunting Norse mythology, that is rare indeed among novels of supernatural horror. In my summary of the plot I have been un-able to convey the many scenes of weird atmosphere in the novel--the ancient chapel hushed by the presence of its unhappy dead, the Gothic somberness of the approach to the hidden room in the huge, moat-surrounded manor house dating from Saxon times, the shuddery mystery of the pine-grove called Thunderbarrow Shaw underneath the cold stars of infinite space, and, most impressive of all to me, the unholy nocturnal delvings of grim Sir Magnus Hammand the Warlock--whose mon-strous ambition it was to rule the earth and live forever by commanding all the world of spirits and demons through the possession of the Seal and Spell of Sol-olmon--into the ancient burial-mound of his pagan ancestor, as told in the archaic diction of the astrologer Culpeper. Besides having such a wealth of shuddery plot situations, the book is written from the most part with a taste, dignity, intelligence, and subtlety that is disappointingly scarce in the field of fantas-tic fiction. Miss Kerruish very adroitly conceals the true nature of the monster until the time comes for it to be revealed and keeps the suspense and fantastic terror of her story strong until the very end. Since the book was published only about half a year before Lovecraft's death, it is doubtful if he read it, though I have heard it was recommended to him; but he would undoubtedly have endorsed it with few reservations as one of the leading works of weird literature of our time.

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FAN SLATS......................................................................11 inhabits is the human mind; that the Hammands are cursed with hereditary canni-balistic lycanthropy manifesting itself only when the victim is in a frosty pine wood in starlight with one human companion; that the missing word is [underlined] garoul, which is the Old French for werewolf. Later she tells him that she first guessed the truth when she saw the doglike carving in the church, but was puzzled by the problem of the origin of the mania; the name of Magnus Fairlocks on the sword-hilt and Oliver's hereditary memory of inscriptions on the missing sword-blade pointed to the burial-mound of Thunder's Barrow, but the blade when found was unreadable; she experimentally produced the werewolf seizure in Oliver under hypnosis in the hidden room in Swanhild's presence but could get no information from him in that state; the next day she learned from Culpeper's manuscript of the stone slab in the barrow, which proved to be Magnus Fairlocks' gravestone, bearing the vital and long-sought information that he was descended from Sigmund the Volsung, whose story, as told in the Elder Edda and in William Morris' verse translation, revealed the origin of the monster-mania in the Hammands. Sigmund the Volsung in about 700 B. C. was persecuted to desperation by his enemies and was finally attacked savagely by a wolf, with the result that he vengefully and blasphemously vowed to fight as a wolf on the side of the Evil Powers against the Asa Gods in the day of Ragnarok; later he and one of his sons in ta starlight pinewood had a fit of wolf-mania (common at the time), which through suggestion and heredity was handed down the line of the heads of the family and believed to be an unshakable curse. Luna now makes her final effort to save Oliver and break the curse; putting him under hypnosis in the hidden room and making him think he is Sigmund the Volsung, she describes to him the Final Warring of the Norse gods, making him live through it as a wolf as he had vowed, and then tells him that the gods have arisen and forgiven him--with the result that when Oliver awakes, the monster-mania is permanently gone. I leave it to you whether that story does not contain enough Gothic elements to satisfy any lover of the macabre. Lovecraft himself could hardly have thought up a plot more filled with the gloom of centuried traditions, dim probings into the unhallowed past, diabolic researches in black magic, and the nameless horror of a hovering doom from some alien space-time. And there is an epic sweep to the book, with its nearly three thousand years of unbroken family history and its powerful associations with the haunting Norse mythology, that is rare indeed among novels of supernatural horror. In my summary of the plot I have been un-able to convey the many scenes of weird atmosphere in the novel--the ancient chapel hushed by the presence of its unhappy dead, the Gothic somberness of the approach to the hidden room in the huge, moat-surrounded manor house dating from Saxon times, the shuddery mystery of the pine-grove called Thunderbarrow Shaw underneath the cold stars of infinite space, and, most impressive of all to me, the unholy nocturnal delvings of grim Sir Magnus Hammand the Warlock--whose mon-strous ambition it was to rule the earth and live forever by commanding all the world of spirits and demons through the possession of the Seal and Spell of Sol-olmon--into the ancient burial-mound of his pagan ancestor, as told in the archaic diction of the astrologer Culpeper. Besides having such a wealth of shuddery plot situations, the book is written from the most part with a taste, dignity, intelligence, and subtlety that is disappointingly scarce in the field of fantas-tic fiction. Miss Kerruish very adroitly conceals the true nature of the monster until the time comes for it to be revealed and keeps the suspense and fantastic terror of her story strong until the very end. Since the book was published only about half a year before Lovecraft's death, it is doubtful if he read it, though I have heard it was recommended to him; but he would undoubtedly have endorsed it with few reservations as one of the leading works of weird literature of our time.