Title:  The Blind Spot

Author:  Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

Release Date:  January, 2004 [EBook #4920] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 27, 2002] [Date last updated:  May 17, 2004]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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THE BLIND SPOT

AUSTIN HALL AND HOMER EON FLINT

INTRODUCTION BY FORREST J ACKERMAN

INTRODUCTION

The lure and Lore of “The blind spot”

BY FORREST J ACKERMAN

The Blind Spot opens with the words:  “Perhaps it were just as well to start at the beginning.  A mere matter of news.”  Suppose I use them in the same sense: 

A mere matter of news:  The first instalment of this fabulous novel was featured in Argosy-All-Story-Weekly for May 14, 1921.  Described as a “different” serial, it was introduced by a cover by Modest Stein.  In the foreground was the profile of a girl of another dimension—­ethereal, sensuous, the eternal feminine—­the Nervina of the story.  Filmy crystalline earrings swept back over her bare shoulders.  Dominating the background was a huge flaming yellow ball, like our Sun as seen from the hypothetical Vulcan—­ splotched with murky, mysterious globii vitonae.  There was an ancient quay, and emerging from the ultramarine waters about it a silhouetted metropolis of spires, domes, and minarets.  It was 1921, and that generation thus received its first glimpse of the alien landscape of The Blind Spot and the baroque beauty of an immortal woman of fantasy fiction.

The authors?  Homer Eon Flint was already a reigning favourite with post-World-War-I enthusiasts of imaginative literature, who had eagerly devoured his queen of life and lord of death, his king of conserve Island and the PLANETEER.  Austin Hall was well known and popular for his almost immortal, Rebel soul, and into the infinite.

Then came this epoch-making collaboration.  When Mary Gnaedinger launched Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine she early presented the blind spot, and printed it again in that magazine’s companion Fantastic Novels.  These reprints are now collectors’ items, almost unobtainable, and otherwise the story has long been out of print.  Rumour says an unauthorised German version of the blind spot, has been published in book form.  There is another book called the blind spot, and also a magazine story, and a major movie studio was to produce a film of the same title.  However, here is presented the only hard-cover version of the only blind spot of consequence to lovers of fantasy.