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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 5, Winter 1944-1945
Page 84
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84 FANTASY COMMENTATOR mare to see a flock of scurrying shadows vanish into the walls, and to find his face covered with a mat of silky web-like threads... One morning, after a similar dream, Ephraim discovers the body of his pet terrier lying just without the door of his bedroom. He picked up the dead terrier and at once met with a bad shock. It was a mere feather-weight, and collapsed in his hands! It was little more than a skeleton, rattling loose in a bag of skin. It had been simply sucked dry! He dropped it in horror, and as he did so he found some silky threads clinging to his hands. And there were threads waving in the air, for one of them twined itself about his head and clung stickily to his face. And then something fell with a soft thud on the floor behind him, and he turned just in time to see a shadow dart to the wall and disappear... About this time a rumor circulates in the neighborhood that a monkey, probably escaped from a menagerie, is climbing about Ephraim's house. Though the descriptions are vague, all agree insofar as the creature is fat and rotund, covered with glossy black hair, and possesses long, spidery limbs. But investigation discloses that no no monkey has escaped from the local zoological gardens---and equally puzzling is the later discovery of a dead Persian cat in the neighborhood: the cat's skin has been sucked dry, and it contains nothing except the creature's bones... Soon after this the police are summoned to Ephraim's house by a hysterical servant. What was found there is better left undescribed. "At the funeral, the undertaker's men said that they had never carried a man who weighed so little for his size." If Wintle's reputation were to stand on this story alone, he would yet deserve mention on the roster of outstanding writers of supernatural fiction. ---ooOoo--- Hidden Horizons---continued from page 73 book to obtain. Another early work along similar lines is William R. Bradshaw's Goddess of Atvatabar (1892); here an Arctic exploring ship finds an opening in the earth and sails within, to discover an inhabited unknown land. Thyra: a Romance of the Polar Pit (1901), by Robert Ames Bennett, tells of a lost race of Norsemen located in a verdant North Polar crater miles in circumference; it is an absorbing novel that is difficult to leave unfinished. And Edison Marshall's Dian of the Lost Land (1935) concerns a lost white race found near the South Pole---it also is a very find story indeed. Obviously, as can be seen, I have compiled no exhaustive list, nor have I attempted any sort of extended literary criticism of what books I have named. I have merely mentioned the titles of those novels which have proved, to me, to be interesting reading. And although the foregoing descriptions have been brief they may yet be instrumental in calling a reader's attention to a particular section of the fantasy fiction field which has apparently heretofore aroused but little interest. In addition to that involved in their main theme, these books in many cases contain other elements of fantasy---some intense, some mild---yet each novel of this group has its particular merit, its distinctive charm. All of these volumes have given this writer many hours of entertainment. May they do the same for others!
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84 FANTASY COMMENTATOR mare to see a flock of scurrying shadows vanish into the walls, and to find his face covered with a mat of silky web-like threads... One morning, after a similar dream, Ephraim discovers the body of his pet terrier lying just without the door of his bedroom. He picked up the dead terrier and at once met with a bad shock. It was a mere feather-weight, and collapsed in his hands! It was little more than a skeleton, rattling loose in a bag of skin. It had been simply sucked dry! He dropped it in horror, and as he did so he found some silky threads clinging to his hands. And there were threads waving in the air, for one of them twined itself about his head and clung stickily to his face. And then something fell with a soft thud on the floor behind him, and he turned just in time to see a shadow dart to the wall and disappear... About this time a rumor circulates in the neighborhood that a monkey, probably escaped from a menagerie, is climbing about Ephraim's house. Though the descriptions are vague, all agree insofar as the creature is fat and rotund, covered with glossy black hair, and possesses long, spidery limbs. But investigation discloses that no no monkey has escaped from the local zoological gardens---and equally puzzling is the later discovery of a dead Persian cat in the neighborhood: the cat's skin has been sucked dry, and it contains nothing except the creature's bones... Soon after this the police are summoned to Ephraim's house by a hysterical servant. What was found there is better left undescribed. "At the funeral, the undertaker's men said that they had never carried a man who weighed so little for his size." If Wintle's reputation were to stand on this story alone, he would yet deserve mention on the roster of outstanding writers of supernatural fiction. ---ooOoo--- Hidden Horizons---continued from page 73 book to obtain. Another early work along similar lines is William R. Bradshaw's Goddess of Atvatabar (1892); here an Arctic exploring ship finds an opening in the earth and sails within, to discover an inhabited unknown land. Thyra: a Romance of the Polar Pit (1901), by Robert Ames Bennett, tells of a lost race of Norsemen located in a verdant North Polar crater miles in circumference; it is an absorbing novel that is difficult to leave unfinished. And Edison Marshall's Dian of the Lost Land (1935) concerns a lost white race found near the South Pole---it also is a very find story indeed. Obviously, as can be seen, I have compiled no exhaustive list, nor have I attempted any sort of extended literary criticism of what books I have named. I have merely mentioned the titles of those novels which have proved, to me, to be interesting reading. And although the foregoing descriptions have been brief they may yet be instrumental in calling a reader's attention to a particular section of the fantasy fiction field which has apparently heretofore aroused but little interest. In addition to that involved in their main theme, these books in many cases contain other elements of fantasy---some intense, some mild---yet each novel of this group has its particular merit, its distinctive charm. All of these volumes have given this writer many hours of entertainment. May they do the same for others!
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