I have enjoyed Sinister Cinema‘s Armchair Fiction and their Lost World-Lost Race Classics series, and saw they recently added six more in their series, almost getting us to 50.
This time all the works are new to me. Some appeared in the pulps, either originally or as reprints. It looks like all may have never been reprinted before.
This next set of works is:
- #43 Weird Tales: Lost World-Lost Race Stories, Vol. 1
- #44 Subterrania, Harl Vincent
- #45 The Devil’s Henchman, John Oldrey
- #46 Snow Rubies, Ganpat
- #47 When the Earth Swung Over, Alfred Colbeck
- #48 An Aerial Runaway, W.P. and C.P. Chipman
So here are some details on these.
#43 Weird Tales: Lost World-Lost Race Stories, Vol. 1, is edited by AF’s own Gregory Luce. I’m looking forward to this one, as it’s an interesting themed reprint from Weird Tales. I think too many think WT ran only horror and dark fantasy stories, not realizing it also ran more standard fare sf/fantasy works.
This is a sampling of six short stories of lost races from WT. As it’s marked Vol. 1, I hope we’ll be seeing a second volume at some point. The cover art comes from WT, for one of the stories reprinted here. Another cover is reprinted on the back.
#44 Subterrania is another pulp reprint, from Harl Vincent (1893-1968) and reprints a two-part series by him. Part one was published in Science Wonder Stories in 1929 as “The Menace from Below.” Part two followed a year later in the same magazine as “The Return to Subterrania.” Armchair Fiction has reprinted other works by Vincent. I’ve yet to read his works.
#45 The Devil’s Henchman, by John Oldrey, was published in 1926 in the U.K., and the original cover was used for this one. I don’t think it was ever reprinted. I have no info on the author.
#46 Snow Rubies is by Ganpat, who was actually Martin Louis Alan Gompertz (1886–1951), a British-Indian soldier and author who was well-known for his many adventure stories in the style of H. Rider Haggard. Snow Rubies appeared in 1925, but doesn’t seem to have been reprinted since. The cover of the U.S. version is used as the cover here.
#47 When the Earth Swung Over is by Alfred Colbeck and was published in the U.K. in 1926. The full title is When the Earth Swung Over: A Strange Story of the Mysterious White People of the Napo and seems to be another boy’s adventure novel.
#48 Our last one, An Aerial Runaway, first appeared in 1901 from the father and son team of W.P. and C.P. Chipman. I have no idea if they published more. The full title is An Aerial Runaway: The Balloon Adventures of Rod & Tod in North & South America. I don’t think it was ever reprinted. It is yet another boy’s adventure novel. Rod and Tod are two cousins who travel with one of their fathers and a scientist in a balloon for this adventure.
I hope to get these soon. I’ve been behind in reading this series and hope to start doing more detailed postings on these. I don’t know when we’ll get more in this series. I do know that we will be getting two more in the Masters of Horror series early next year, and we get another pair whom I’ve not heard of, one of them female. So I look forward to those.
