I keep an eye out on Sinister Cinema‘s Armchair Fiction and found they have added 12 more volumes to their Lost World-Lost Race Classics series. This brings it up to 42 volumes in total.
These works are a mix of stories I know, including one I have read and reviewed, along with several I have never heard of. Some appeared in the pulps, either originally or as reprints. It looks like some may have never been reprinted before. And there is one volume I was looking for, which is great.
This next set of works is:
- #31 Vampires of the Andes, by Henry Carew
- #32 The Sea Girl, by Ray Cummings
- #33 Dark Atlantis, by David Craigie
- #34 Valley of Eyes Unseen, by Gilbert Collins
- #35 Strange Story of William Hyde, by Patrick and Terence Casey
- #36 City of Wonder, by E. Charles Vivian
- #37 Enchanted Stone, by Charles Lewis Hind
- #38 Sea Demons, by Victor Rousseau
- #39 Cave of a Thousand Columns, by T.E. Grattan-Smith
- #40 A Queen of Atlantis, by Frank Aubrey
- #41 Light in the Sky, by Herbert Clock and Eric Boetze
- #42 House on Stilts, by R.H. Hazard
Here’s a little more about these, and I hope to review these over the coming months.
Vampires of the Andes is one of two works by U.K. author Henry Carew. Little is known of him. His other work, The Secret of the Sphinx (1923), which has never been reprinted, is about a hidden city in the Sahara. This one was published in 1925, and only previously reprinted by Arno Press. It’s set in an underground world in the Andes with the reminents of Atlantis. Our hero enters it to save the girl he loves and undergoes an ordeal to do so.
I have posted on Ray Cummings before, and while several of his works are being reprinted of later, this is the first recent reprint of The Sea Girl. It appeared in Argosy All-Story in 1929, and the cover used there was later used for its first book appearance. That version is used as the cover here. It was reprinted in 1930 and 1932 and nothing since. In 1990, the waters of the world are being drained into a hole in the Pacific! Our scientist hero, with daughter and assistant, takes a submarine there and find a strange race that threatens the world.
David Craigie is really U.K. author Dorothy Glover (1901-71). She wrote several children’s books, and this alias was used for them. Only a couple of those books are of a fantastical type. One is Dark Atlantis (1951), which has never been reprinted before. Two men in a submarine that one had build travel to the depths of the ocean and find Atlantis and much more.
Gilbert Collins (1890-1960) is a U.K. author of adventure and detective fiction with two works considered lost-world classics. One is The Starkenden Quest (1925), set in Southeast Asia with an underground world with a race of dwarfs. It was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1949 and cover featured, so I really hope Armchair Fiction reprints it as well. Valley of Eyes Unseen (1923) was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1952, and its cover is used for this edition. It’s about a lost valley in Tibet with the descendants of Alexander the Great’s Greeks.
Patrick Casey (1893-1941) wrote several pulp stories in the teens, ’20s, and ’30s, some with his brother Terence (1895-1945). The most were the Bob Storm series in Top-Notch in the teens. Strange Story of William Hyde (1916) was published in book form and looks like it was never reprinted. I think it may have appeared in the Hearst papers and reprinted from there. The hero finds a hidden city located in a meteor on a Pacific Island with descendants of the Khans. And he falls in love with the queen, but things go awry. I have no idea the source of the cover artwork, but suspect some pulp.
I had already posted on E. Charles Vivian’s lost-world tale City of Wonder. It had first appeared in book form in 1922 and was later reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1947 where it was cover featured. I had gotten the later reprint by Centaur Press in their Time-Lost series. So it’s nice a new edition of this is out. I have no idea where the cover art came from. I wish they had used the cover artwork from FFM, as it’s nice. But see my review of this tale set in Borneo. He has other lost-world/lost-race novels I wish would be reprinted, as I’ve pointed out previously.
Charles Lewis Hind (1862–1927) was a British journalist and writer. It appears he only did a couple of works of a fantastic nature, one being Enchanted Stone (1898). A journalist finds the stone of the title, which leads him on an adventure. This is the first time it has been reprinted.
Victor Rousseau, also known as Victor Roussau Emanuel (1879-1960), was a long-time pulp author. He did the early Jim Anthony stories, and in the teens and ’20s did a handful of novel-length fantastical works for the Munsey pulps. Steeger Books has reprinted two of those. Sea Demons is another, from All-Story in 1916. The cover from All-Story is used for this volume. It’s about a strange, and dangerous, aquatic race. Hopefully we can see the rest of his early sf pulp stories, like Messiah of the Cylinder, Eye of Balmork, etc.
T.E. Grattan Smith (1871-1946) was an Australian journalist and author of children’s books. Cave of a Thousand Columns (1938) is his only lost-world story, about a pair of boys taking an adventure with explorer where they find a hidden world under a mountain in Australia with monsters and birdmen. It has never been reprinted, and the cover is taken from the original dust jacket.
One work I was really looking forward to being reprinted is Frank Aubrey’s A Queen of Atlantis (1899). This is the sequel to Devil-Tree of El Dorado that Armchair had reprinted, and with King of the Dead (also reprinted), makes up the Monella trilogy. It was reprinted in The Argosy in 1899 and later reprinted by Arno Press. This is actually a prequel to Devil-Tree, set in the Sargasso Sea. I have no idea of the source for the cover artwork as The Argosy didn’t have cover artwork at the time.
Another rare work is Light in the Sky, by Herbert Clock and Eric Boetzel, as far as I know it’s their only work. Boetzel would later be deputy attorney general of New York state. Published in 1929, it was reprinted by Arno Press. A group of Aztecs flee the Spaniards by going into the bowels of the Earth, building a super-science city. Our hero will discover this world, following a girl from that world. By the way, the cover is taken from an issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries which reprinted The Lost Continent by Cutcliffe Hyne.
House on Stilts is a rare work by Robert Holmes Hazard (1869-1912), a journalist, novelist, and one of the first White House correspondents. This is his only fantastical work, and appeared in People’s magazine in 1910, and was reprinted in book form that year. And this is its first reprint since. A detective and reporter are after a dangerous criminal, and track him to his island hideout in the Carribean, which has a strange group lead by a voodoo queen.
So it’s another interesting set of works. Several I look forward to reading. Now that I have A Queen of Atlantis, I can read that series. And there are more such works that I now want to see. Check them out.
The cover for The Light in the Sky is originally from the December 1944 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries. The artist is Lawrence Sterne Stevens, who always used the one-word pseudonym, Lawrence.
Yes, found that out, but choose not to note it. Was going to note it in my review of the book.