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.
Who wrote the story? When I first looked into the question, as a 15 year
old boy, Homer Eon Flint (he originally spelled his name with a “d”)
was already dead of a fall into a canyon. In 1949 his widow told me: “I
think Homer's father contributed that middle name”--the same name (with
slightly different spelling) that the Irish poet George Russell took
as his pen-name, which became known by its abbreviation AE. Mrs. Flindt
said of Flint's father: “He was a very deep thinker, and enjoyed reading
heavy material.” Like father, like son. “Homer always talked over his
ideas with me, and although I couldn't always follow his thoughts it
seemed to help him to express them to another--it made some things come
more clearly to him.”
Flint was a great admirer of H. G. Wells (this little
grandmother-schoolteacher told me) and had probably read all his works
up to the time when he (Flint) died in 1924. He had read Doyle and
Haggard, but: “Wells was his favourite--the real thinker.”
Flint found a fellow-thinker in Austin Hall, whom he met in San
Jose, California, while working at a shop where shoes were repaired
electrically--“a rather new concept at the time.” Hall, learning that
Flint lived in the same city, sought him out, and they became fast
friends. Each stimulated the other. As Hall told me twenty years ago of
the origin of THE BLIND SPOT:
“One day after we had lunched together, I held my finger up in front of
one of my eyes and said: 'Homer, couldn't a story be written about that
blind spot in the eye?' Not much was said about it at the time, but four
days later, again at lunch, I outlined the whole story to him. I wrote
the first eighteen chapters; Homer took up the tale as 'Hobart Fenton'
and wrote the chapters about the house of miracles, the living death,
the rousing of Aradna's mind, and so forth, up to 'The Man from Space,'
where once again I took over.”
To THE BLIND SPOT Hall contributed a great knowledge of history and
anthropology, while Flint's fortes were physics and medicine. Both had a
great fund of philosophy at their command.
When I met Hall (about four years older than Flint) he was in his
fifties: a devil-may-care old codger (old to a fifteen-year-old, that
is) full of good humour and indulgence for a youthful admirer who had
journeyed far to meet him. He casually referred to his 600 published
stories, and I carried away the impression of one who resembled both
in output and in looks that other fiction-factory of the time, Edgar
Wallace.
Finally: Several years ago, before I knew anything about the present
volume, I had an unusual experience. (At that time I had no reason to
think THE BLIND SPOT would ever become available as a book, for the
location of the heirs proved a Herculean task by itself; publishers had
long wanted to present this amazing novel but could not do so until I
located Mrs. Mae Hall and Mrs. Mabel Flindt.) While, unfortunately, I
did not take careful notes at the time, the gist of the occurrence was
this:
I visited a friend whose hobby (besides reading fantasy) was the
occult, who volunteered to entertain me with automatic writing and
the ouija-board. Now, I share Lovecraft's scepticism towards the
supernatural, regarding it as at best a means of amusement. When the
question arose of what spirits we should try to lure to our planchette,
the names of Lovecraft, Merritt, Hall, and Flint popped into my
pixilated mind. So I set my fingers on the wooden heart and, since my
host was also a Flint admirer, we asked about Flint's fatal accident.
The ouija spelled out: